Fhank Fab its Friday.
Hello
Ive realised I always say I love the day I'm writing my blog etc. Actually I don't have a favourite day and I'm a "my glass is always half full" sort of gal, depending on the beverage as to the sort of day it is or will be.
Im not sure about Thursdays though.
Thursday saw me wince on the scales at Slimming World. Id put on 1/2 lb. I went home slightly deflated but with a positive attitude. I did great all day then Jonathan came home and it all went down hill. Kebabs for tea, bottle of wine, then he pushed me over the edge by telling me he'd bought me a bar of galaxy. How can I not love a man like that? I thought I could save the weekly £5 fee for a liposuction drain at my ankles.
Whats new.
Its been a busy week here at Suffolk Socks. We've just had a delivery of Opal yarn.
Already they are proving popular, I can't choose which one I like best as they are all lovely, when I'm packing up an order I always want to knit that choice. Opal is a great work horse yarn. Great to knit with, hard wearing and their colours are always fabulous. A popular sock yarn with everyone.
Disaster of the WIP
[caption id="attachment_254" align="alignright" width="300"]
Goodbye lovely socks, I loved and lost you[/caption]
Ive had disaster on the sock front this week. I was knitting up a sock design from Lazy Sunday Socks book and I loved them. They were so 'girly',the yarn was a Suffolk Socks Yarn SSY from our You shall Go To The Ball range and they were going to be my Mums Christmas socks.WELL I tried them on and couldn't get them over my heel so I decided to frog them. On reflection I was using a different needle HiyaHiya fixed 9" circs . My gauge I discovered is really tight when Im using these so I think I Ill re knit them using 2.5mm and see how I get on. I was knitting some socks for my son using these needles, thankfully I was still on the leg so I quickly changed to DPNs and my gauge has gone back to normal. A bonus is the zing DPNs are a lovely pink. I love girly colours as my husband calls them, I'm always drawn to soft pastels and lately I've been really strong and chosen reds and strong colours,as lovely as they are I have to work really hard persuading myself to knit with these colours.
Look what you became.
[caption id="attachment_343" align="alignleft" width="300"]
Hand dyed yarn .Suffolk socks Yarn SSY.[/caption]
After frogging my socks I decided to cast on another shawl using this yarn . Another design from Helen Stewart of Curious Handmade. Summertime Shawl. Helens designs never disappoint and once again I find myself thoroughly enjoying my new cast on. I think its looking fab and I'm loving how the colours in this yarn are showing when knit.the final border I'm going to use another SSY hand dyed yarn from the same range, its tonal throughout and it will look fab.
Does this stress you out ? It does me.
Does anyone else find it quite stressful choosing a colour or yarn for a project. Years ago my friend went to have her blood pressure checked and it was really high. When she was asked her if she'd been in a stressful situation or was there any reason for it to be up the only answer she could think of was before she got there wed been material shopping in Bungay for some material to make a quilt and she was getting anxious as to wether she'd made the right choice etc. I could fully sympathise with her as i knew exactly how she felt.
Another stressful thing I find is and it might just be me but...... when you've bought some wool and someone harmlessly comments "you always choose that colour. Does that mean urgh, or ohh thats lovely, or how boring, whatever it means it gets my brain into an anxious state and I end up getting a colour that is so not me. Then I get home and my lot ask me why I've chosen that not so me colour. Then I have this out pouring of anxiety as to how I always feel anxious when Im buying another soft pastel shade and people are nicely suggesting another colour. So after this confession I've decided I love all pastel shades and after several stash enhancements that have been a complete waste of money I'm always going to go with my first choice which will usually be a girly colour.
Whats new on the needles.
Not a lot this week. My Summertime Shawl has been getting lots of love as have my Gentleman socks for Thomas. Tonight as its #fridaynightcaston I'm going to cast on a new project.Im joining Dani (Little Bobbins) Deb (Tinkhickman) and Paula (The Snail garden) on a knit along the Madewell cardigan a design from Joji Locatelli. Well all be meeting up again at The Curious Handmade retreat in October. Helen and Mette organise this retreat and its fab. I'm really looking forward to Mettes workshop about natural dyeing. She was interviewed by Helen on The Curious Handmade podcast and it was so interesting.
The yarn I'm using is from stash. Its a yarn I purchased from Ginger Twist Studio in Edinburgh on a yarn crawl with Katherine. We were such a bad influence on each other and were attending the Geeky Puffin Knit retreat. That weekend cemented friendships and I'm so thankful I went. I met up with Katherine( she was teaching there) and Sue at EYF and I love them. I m in touch with Katherine often and she's def my northern bestie Shes a stone throw from my Mum and Dad so I'm hoping to meet up with her in the autumn.
[caption id="attachment_348" align="alignright" width="300"]
new project , new project bag.[/caption][caption id="attachment_347" align="alignnone" width="300"]
BFL sock rocks Juicy.[/caption]
The colour looks really bright but its not its like watermelon, quite tonal its utterly beautiful and quite me.
Knit Group
Friday usually sees me at my local knit group. Its always a lovely meet up which usually sees one of us seriously enabled, but today for some reason we were all very good. We even managed to convince Maggie that she would be absolutely fine knitting socks. I was thrilled to see a FO from Ann using SuffolkSocks yarn SSY Hand dyed by myself and it was beautiful. The pattern used is 'Across the Pond' a design from Mina Phillips, The knitting Expat. This was my holiday knit so I know how lovely it is too knit.
Ann's Across the pond shawl by Mina Phillips. Beautiful.
Fibre East
Im hoping to get to Fibre East this weekend. This depends solely wether my Grand daughter Baby Walters decides to make an appearance in which case a scud missile will not get me out of Ipswich. However if I do go and you happen to see me at the Kettleyarnco stand can you please ignore my husband who will have been instructed to physically manhandle me, rugby tackle me to the ground and drag me away screaming and shouting, even if you can see my knickers please ignore us. .
Thank you for reading, enjoy your day
love
Julie x
Just for the record. Not only is there not a chance in hell you'd get to see my knickers but my husband is fab and he'd let me buy anything(within reason).