The Sock Notebook Rides Again

So I have my Traveller's Notebook. I also have this:

If you've been dropping by here for a while you might recognise it as my sock notebook. No? You're right: it hasn't seen a lot of action lately. I made my first entries almost two years ago - I ordered wool for my first ever pair of socks on St. Patrick's Day 2015 (or so the notebook says) - and started recording my progress not long after.

Then, for a bit, I was knitting faster than I could write: the notebook couldn't keep up and I began tucking ball bands and snips of yarn inside, in the hope I'd get back to it. Last week I knocked my notebook off the shelf and, yes, of course, all my carefully curated but completely unattached ephemera fluttered to the floor, all wild and free. So I decided to catch up.

This page

records a big moment in the life of a hand knitted sock: its first hole. When a shop bought sock wears through, we bin it (unless we're a student who works on the who is going to see my feet principle. Maybe your mother? When you come home for the holidays? Let's park that thought and move on..) But it's not so easy to turn your back on hand made. Clearly I had to learn how to darn.

And this page

makes a not of my contribution to Winwick Mum's Sock Line last summer. I think she'll be running it again this year, so I need to remember to leave myself time in the old knitting schedule. Schedule? Sounds like I have a plan. Maybe there's a small one, incorporating a phone photography class in a knitting shop. I'll say that again because it's a magical combination. A phone photography class in a knitting shop. I'm looking forward to it very much. There will be wool, new wool, so I'd better get going on pinning down the details of what I've already used. Just one more sock related note before I go. Pablo Neruda, I recently discovered, wrote a beautiful poem about a pair of hand knitted socks. You can find Ode to my Socks here

"and what is good is doubly good
when it is a matter of two socks
made of wool in winter.."

Making It All Over Again

The holidays are all tied up and finished off here at High In The Sky. I got up at 5.30 this morning to wave The Tall One off to the airport, having climbed into bed just before 1.00 am because I'd stayed up to gossip with the other one. But that's what you do, when you know Studentland is calling: if the talk starts, you don't say It's bedtime, you say I'm listening.

As they pack up I finish off little jobs I'd promised. I did a bit of mending for The Tall One yesterday: exactly the same mending I'd done for him as he got ready to travel to Scotland for Freshers Week, over three years ago. As I stitched those stitches over again, I thought about him surrounded by suitcases and boxes holding half of his life, back then, and I thought about today's trip, travelling light, in charge, back to do his Finals, back to his friends and his flat, and the promise of a job, not next year - his diploma year - but the one after that. That's a whole life, right there, pulled together in between two mending sessions.

As a scrapbooker, I'm used to seeing a record of what we've been up to as I create. That's what it's there for. That's the point. With a big sewing or knitting project often the recording comes as you finish it off and reflect upon what life has cast up since you picked out the pattern and made the first stitch. I recently finished off that brown yoke sweater in my first photo. It's the second one of this "crofthoose" pattern I've made this year. The first - maybe you remember it - is blue with red and green houses, bright and cheery and the sweater I turned to every morning in a difficult March in which I cast on and knitted hard and fast on a new version I'm now wearing with a lighter heart.

I've finished up that man sweater I've been telling you about too. It's another double. First time I knitted this pattern - maybe four years ago? - I knew enough about knitting to realise the pattern was wrong and some trickery would be needed to get sleeves and neckband combined. This time (for I had to make it again as everyone was agreed this particular pattern offered your every day accountant both cuddle factor and macho manliness in magical proportions) I knew enough about Ravelry to look for help, which I found. No trickery required.

Every project marks some change, ecah one is a way of moving on. I'm working a shawl at the moment, with many, many stitches: plenty of time in that to wonder what's next. Maybe I'll be warding off a stiff Scottish breeze on Graduation evening the first time I wear it. Who knows? How about you? What plans do you have for your works in progress?

Project Notes:

Crofthoose Yoke by Ella Gordon knitted in Jamieson and Smith 2 ply bought at Tangled Yarns

Baseball Sweater from Knits Men Want by Bruce Weinstein knitted in Rowan Alpaca Merino DK

Drachenfels Shawl by Melanie Berg knitted in Rosy Green Wool Cheeky Merino DK

A Million Tiny Little Things: New Me?

I had a new pencil I was going to use today: a new Batman pencil, just exactly like the one I bought for Little E's Christmas stocking and then wanted to keep for myself. (No. I didn't. Santa heard my sighing and obliged.)

One last Christmas picture before we pack it all away? The ultimate gift, from my sister to me : scrapbooking pants

I can't find my pencil anywhere. So much for my fresh new year of blogging. I can't blog without a sharp pencil because I still, even after all these years, scribble in a notebook before a finger ever touches a keyboard. It's a habit I can't break. It has kept me going for over a thousand posts now. Although, some time round the middle of December - full disclosure coming up - I did suggest to myself that I might shut up shop here at the end of the year. I did. I thought about it. I haven't run out of creative plans: not at all. If anything, it's quite the reverse. I have so many things I want to try that finding the time to write about what I've made seems to slip down the list.I'm still making like mad.

I'm still scrapbooking as much as ever I'm able (this weekend, for instance, now that the brother who has been sleeping on top of all my supplies has gone to spend a few days with Little E). And I'm delighted to be able to say that I'm going to be back with Gossamer Blue for the 2017 term, alongside all of these amazing creative brains

Gossamer Blue has exciting plans for this year and it's a real pleasure to be a part of that.

I've also been working on my contribution to

Get It Scrapped's Story + Design feature for February. I've been recording the audio for it this week and, know what? I quite enjoyed doing it. Thinking, thinking..

There has been plenty of knitting going on, too. I did four pairs of sock and two scarves as Christmas gifts. The pokemon socks for Little E

done with amazing self striping wool from London House Yarns (on etsy, follow them on IG for shop updates) made it into an IG photo before they were wrapped; and I have one more photo of

a ripple scarf in progress, with Koigu Painter's Palette yarn and a free pattern from Loop London. My current project is the can-you-finish-it-before-I-go-back? cardigan for Uncle Dave. It's a blue tweed teacher-ly number and I have managed two sleeves and a back, so I should probably go see if I can get any further with it. If I disappear from here for more than a few days, come find me on instagram! But I'll be back here very soon, possibly wearing my scrapbooking pants. I've just spotted that new pencil. Under a big pile of new books. But that's another story.

Memorandum Monday: Hello Old Friend

It was a companionable weekend here, this last one: the kind which adds to that Here's December! feeling. There's the doorbell! Quick! Turn on the twinkling lights!

For on Friday afternoon I had received two messages: one from my dear friend and fellow blogger Alexa, of Trimming the Sails, asking if we'd be about the next morning for a flying visit; and one from Studentland, asking if we'd be around on Sunday. Yes! Yes! we said; and we went to the attic and brought down the fairy lit garlands with which we brighten our very dark stairs over Christmas (and beyond, if I can get away with it). 

And Alexa, and her lovely husband, came and we ate Dundee cake and chatted; and then, for the first time (because you knew there had to be one in there somewhere) I was able to leaf through one of Alexa's stunning photo books. You can read about this one on her blog. It's a beautiful thing to hold in the hands: put together with such care and love and no little skill. Thank you, Alexa, for letting me see! And for making time to visit on a short, busy trip.

But wait: on Sunday I managed another first. I finished another sweater and its owner came from Studentland to collect it: the first one I've knitted on the suggestion of a friend. It's well over a year now - maybe two? - since Fiona linked me up with the Kate Davies Owl Sweater. I thought it was clever and beyond what I knew how to do and it was then; but that was before I learned how to knit a sweater on circular needles. It turned out to be very straightforward, thanks to a clearly written pattern, and fast, thanks to the chunky wool (Rowan British Sheep Breeds).

The trickiest part was in the finding of thirty two - count 'em - tiny buttons to fit onto the faces of sixteen cabled owls. After a bit of thinking I decided to use buttons cut from old white school shirts; and now I like the idea of her wearing a little bit of her old uniform as her new one. 

So that was my weekend. We stayed away from the shops and stayed in with friends. Oh, look:

there we are, colour coordinating just for you. How was your weekend? Anything new?

Maybe you'd like to make a memo, for Monday, just as  Deb, Helena, Mary-Lou, Ladkyis, Maggie, Barbara, Mitra and Alexandra did last week. Go on, give 'em a wave! And have a good week.

Memorandum Monday: Wool Piggery

...or yarn piggery: either, both, all of it...it's my new word, which I acquired at the weekend (thanks to the Grocery Girls knitting podcast), right around the same time that I was unpacking some fresh supplies. In my defence I offer Christmas knitting: these skeins are all destined to be turned into Christmas gifts.

Ah: skeins: now we get to the real memo, this Monday. For here in the UK, for all of my knitting life so far, I've been used to buying my wool in balls, neatly wrapped with a paper band and completely ready for some fast needle action. But it turns out, I am discovering, that it's not the same the world over; and that here too, more and more independent dyers are offering wool in skeins, which have to be wound into balls or cakes before they can be knit. All of my Christmas gift wool arrived in skeins.

But I had a plan. I know a man who still needs a lot of rest and who has just been given another four weeks off work, in time to help out, in a quiet, sitting down kind of way. My plan looked like this:

...until it hit a snag. Because, I discovered, he is the one who knows how to wind wool. I've never done it before. His mum used to use hanks of wool straight from the mill, because she knew someone who worked there. My mum bought balls of wool from the wool shop (which used to have a clever little lay-away scheme. You could choose your wool and set aside as much as you needed for your project and then collect and pay for it, a ball at a time. I often called in at lunchtimes, out of school). So, as you can see from the pictures, we swapped. I held it and he wound it and we surprised ourselves with the little bits of social history we thought about as we worked. Remember black and white films in which a male suitor was pressed into service as a yarn holder? How he'd sit in the parlour and try to impress with his patience? Or, think of a Tom and Jerry cartoon: sometimes a great round ball of yarn would come rolling along the floor. Now I know why it looked like it did, because when we had finished winding, our skein had turned into this:

And that is my "first" for this week. How about you?

  Alexandra, Deb, Ruth, Barbara, Helena, Mitra, Mary-Lou, Ladkyis, Maggie, Krafty Karen and Karen made a memo last time round. Go on: give 'em a wave! And maybe think about joining us? Have a good week!

Memorandum Monday: Take a Seat, Make a Wish

Can you smell it? No: I guess not. Our Christmas pudding is safely tucked away, wrapped in greaseproof paper, in its white china bowl, after six hours of boiling on Friday afternoon. And if you too make a pudding, you'll know that with the stirring comes a wish: you mix it together with the oldest wooden spoon in your collection and you think about something nice.

And as I'm mixing I'm thinking about weaving in all the ends...

We had our something nice right there in front of us: our girl called round specially, just to stir. I wonder what she wished for? She has a washing machine in Studentland; so her wish probably wasn't the same as mine, which included a load of clean underwear and the innards of the washing machine removed from the kitchen table.

But that pudding worked fast! The postman brought the spare part first thing on Saturday morning; and before long, freshness reigned once again in the Fair household. That's our first first for the weekend. We (and I use that term loosely) have never fixed our own washing machine before. 

....and working my stretchy cast off again, so that I can fit it over my head...

Riding high on a sweet smelling, sudsy tide of success, our patient decided that he felt up to a trip out, so I told him about a junk shop a friend had mentioned to me recently. Our second first! So close to home and we hadn't even realised it was there, and with all the perfect junk shop essentials: a winding brick alley with signs to follow before we found it, a must-have (but too large) piece to lust after right outside the entrance (a double sided school changing room bench), old sewing mahines, each with a story to tell..

..in the end we chose two chairs, probably from the old school round the corner, with scratched seats and chipped paint. Dare me to carve our initials on one? Or maybe you didn't do that at your school?

....so that I can wear it out on Sunday afternoon (picture on instagram). Pattern is called Strokkur, by Ysolda Teague, on Ravelry, knitted in Istex Lett Lopi from Carreg Yarns

And that's my memo for this Monday. How about you? Anything new? Anything you know now that you didn't know before? Maybe you'd like to make a memo too. We'd love to hear from you!

Deb, Alexandra, Helena, Mitra, Mary-Lou, Ladkyis, Maggie, KraftyKaren and Karen made one last week. Go on, give 'em a wave! Good luck with your week!

Poke-Story

That nephew of mine, Little E: if he texts, it's usually a matter of some urgency often requiring rapid aunt participation of an interesting kind. Saturday's message got straight to the point:

Auntie Sian, can you knit me a pokeball hat, please and maybe a pikachu too. Thank you. E xx

There was even a Ravelry link attached; and in that I detected the hand of his mother, so I texted back:

That's a crochet pattern. But there are knitted ones too. I can do that. No problem. 

She returned:

He was worried you might not know what a pokeball hat is. But I said of course you'd know

And, not for the first time, I whispered a quiet word of thanks to the generous knitters who create and post their patterns to a place where an aunt can find them first thing on a Saturday morning, right around breakfast time.

Pattern: a free Ravelry download by SashaKnits (thank you!)
Yarn: Debbie Bliss Cashmerino (which is machine washable)

I printed out my poke- pattern, but it was Sunday night before I was able to sit down and order some poke-wool: red, black and white aran, with a larger-than-my-usual-size circular needle, which couldn't really be called poke(y) at all because it looked so fat. And then I waited for the wool to arrive.

A couple of days later, as I listened for the postman, came not a text message this time, but the very face of Little E himself. Face time! 

"Why aren't you at school?" I asked.

"I'm sick!" he said brightly and smiled his most winning smile, so what could I do but clear my schedule and settle down for a long poke-chat. 

"I'll phone you again later, Auntie Sian: you have a lot more pokemon to learn!" he finished, quite a bit later.

And, what do you know, by the time he called back the parcel of wool had arrived and we were able to open it together. Now, this was good and this was also bad. The red and the black came out of the parcel looking poke-perfect and Little E approved. But when the white appeared? Poke-panic! It wasn't white at all, it was cream.

"That's not right," Little E shook his head. "That white has yellow in it. You need white with....grey in it."

which was pretty deep, I thought, coming from a seven year old, and also unnervingly accurate. The white wasn't white, it was yellow.

"I have to go out now," I said. "But phone me again in a hour and I'll have poke-progress to report."

So he did. And I did. I ran to the Post Office (no: not actually, what a thought) and, on my way, I tried our local wool shop, keeping my fingers very tightly crossed since  I only resort to internet shopping because this place doesn't often have what I need. I was in luck. The poke-hat was back in business, with a new white, signed off by Little E, and a big needle for some swiss darning.

It didn't take very long. So I ran back to the Post Office (no, not really). He says he likes it. But I think it's going to take a bit of persuasion to get him to take a picture. He's gone all shy. Or maybe he's just too busy chasing pokemon. Hey, Little E, I want a go!

All's Fair

I'm sitting balanced on the arm of the chair beside the range and I'm dreaming of the dress my Mum is knitting for me: a soft fawn colour, with a band of bright pattern worked in. Later, there were others: a spring yellow pleated skirt and a top with daisies on, a smokey blue sweater dress with cables stretching up the front, but the first one was always my favourite. That pattern, the Fair isle.

Yoke sweater Nordic Summer (a free pattern from Drops Design) knitted in Drops Alpaca

I'm sitting on my bed, now: a teenager flipping through the pages of a Christmas present book : Vogue: More Dash Than Cash, which I read and reread in place of spending any money at all, for I have very little. I'm stopping again at the page I always linger by: a spread of linen and crsip cotton outfits, with a delicately patterned cardigan arranged on top. Fair isle.

Now I'm a grown up and I receive a message from a friend, who points me in the direction of a blog she thinks I might like (Kate Davies Designs. Thank you Julie). I scroll through screen after screen of beautiful knitwear. I learn about colourwork and I long to be able to reproduce the patterns I see appearing, one after the other, for sweaters with yokes which frame the face with bands of colour and pattern and neat, firm stitches.

More than a year later, I make a start. I have been knitting socks, not realising, when I begin, that the techniques I gather will push me on to where I've always wanted to be..

..knitting those stitches, feeling the fabric firm up under my needle as the yarn weaves along the back with a satisfying pattern of its own. This sweater teaches me more about what I need to learn next; but, for now, it's soft and pretty and she likes it. She'll take it with her when she goes. I reach for my new handbook, Kate Davies' Yokes. I have a way to go.

Memorandum Monday

Aha! Sunny Monday: I'm going to make the most of you today. It's going to be a week of comings and goings here at High In The Sky. There'll be much doing of laundry, and counting of travel snacks, and - best of all - browsing for holiday magazines. For once I've been allowed a sneak peek of mine

strictly on a need-to-know basis only, which means the pages about Berlin have already been browsed. As it's a new magazine I found recently in Tesco, I'll make a memo. It's called Explore History: Travel Into the Past by Imagine Publishing and it's a sort of Rough Guide for museum collectors. Obviously it has my name on it; but if you're like me, and in the UK, look out for it and see what you think.

I have a second memo for this weekend

..knitting related, so not entirely new, to be sure, but let's call it an advancement. I've been talking about sock blockers for months now - you might have heard me at it - and I've been reading about the advantages of letting a dampened finished sock dry around a form so that it takes on its proper shape. But sock blockers aren't cheap! And every time I've hovered over the buy button I've pulled back. Eventually I did what I always do in the end: I thought about making some instead. I took the picture to my chief wire bender and then he did what he always does and said he'd think it over, which often takes some weeks but yields great results. By Friday night, though, I'd been holding onto July's Socks of the Month and my useful youtube videos for quite some time, so I urged action..

..he looked at this idea and this one and this before he started. I'm so pleased! Can't help loving a man who knows his way round a pair of wire cutters.

These socks are going to be my contribution to Winwick Mum's Yarndale Sock Line so I have to head off now and get them packaged up. They're a women's medium size, knitted in Wendy Roam Fusion 4 ply from the Broken Chocolate Bar Sock Recipe by Corrina Ferguson, from LoveKnitting. I hope someone finds them cosy and cheering.

So that's what's new round here. How about you? Anything you did for the first time? Anything you learned that you didn't know before? Maybe today's the day to make a memo. Because it's Monday. 

Last week Deb, Helena, Eileen, Jane, Mitra, Mary-Lou, Ladkyis, Maggie and Krafty Karen shared what they had been up to. Go on, give 'em a wave! And have a good week!

I won't be here next Monday, but please memo on..I won't be long..

No Need to Take Them Off at Bedtime

So as soon as I'd cast off the last stitch, darned in the last end, she packed them up in her rucksack and took them to camp.

With thanks to Grandpa's old Scout Handbook

Or, to be more accurate, since I managed two pairs, she put the blue and navy ones on her feet, which were stuffed, then, into her wellies, and she packed the stripey ones for emergencies.

 On Friday night we took her to the drop-off point and the latest news we have is in a forlorn text this morning which tells us that pick ups might be earlier than originally planned. We're used to that round here. It's a rain thing.

I hope her feet have stayed warm, because I was pleased that she had agreed to play along when I had suggested special camping socks. I would have saved their details for a memo this Monday; but, new thing as they are, I can't count them as a weekend innovation if, by Friday night, they were in a field, in a sleeping bag, under canvas.

All the same, they are the first heavy duty socks I have produced, with (UK term) double knitting wool from West Yorkshire Spinners - I love this wool, it seems to help my stitches come out more neatly and more ordered - and a new toe style which achieves a chic little raised line along each side of the top of the foot. I'll definitely be using it again. 

I had started with a pattern from ravelry; but - lesson learned - I now know that just because it has a cute name, a persuasive picture and a set of instructions that doesn't mean my downloaded pages hold the secret to an excellent well fitting sock. So I tried again and made it up as I went along (though some of the colourwork pattern comes from Folk Socks by Nancy Bush. Then I wrote it all down in my sock notebook. Maybe what I need now is a cute name? For socks to help you camp in a field in the wet and cold, in a tent? How about the "No Need TO Take Them Off At Bedtime Socks"? That's June Sock of the Month.

If It's Snowing, There Must Be Socks

It's getting chilly in here I thought this morning, as I grabbed a cup of coffee and sat down to check my emails. The first one I opened offered "What To Wear In May" so, as we are nearly there, I took a quick look : Choose light layers! it said. Pair with sandals and a floaty scarf so you look cool and fresh at May's festivals and markets! And then I looked out of the window, and saw that it was snowing, so I closed up the email and went to look for a pair of knitted socks instead. 

After that, I hauled myself up the stairs (that exercise bike is beginning to do its worst) to take a few photos of the new pages I have made in my sock notebook. I know: It has been a while; but I've been knitting more and recording less. I'm pretty sure that I haven't told you about these ones before:

That would be two pairs of easy to put on, wear instead of shoes socks:

I cut pieces from the invoice and snipped a sample of the wool because I want this notebook to be a proper scrapbook: full of scraps.

Soon after I finished those, I bought quite a few balls of my favourite good value wool: Drops Fabel

 It washes easily at 40 and the first pairs I ever made  have now been through the machine once a week for a year without showing any signs of wear.

But then I needed somewhere to put that new wool. So we went to Ikea where I found a perfect set of white metal drawers. Remember these?

and all the time I'm knitting and purling, with a pair for Fiona, and a couple for my sister (to be honest, she got the ones striped together from the ends of other projects. She deserves better) and suddenly we were getting close to Christmas. I started on some presents

while at the same time looking forward to a present of my own

which led me to come up with the idea for Sock Of the Month. But that's probably enough for today. Back to knitting instead of recording. After all, I have to decide what I'll make for May..

I Did This, I Did That..

So it gets to Thursday and I think to myself, I still have no idea what kind of a week this is going to turn out to be. Creatively it's been a little bit of this, a little bit of that, and not very much of anything at all. I pick something up and I put it down again. Two rows of rib here, a snip of some double sided sticky tape there..

although I have a couple of things on the go. Yesterday I picked up my littlest scissors and cut into some pretty Wilna Furstenberg files, just for the sheer pleasure of trimming paper. I don't have a silhouette, so "print and cut" for me really does mean print and cut. But Wilna makes it easy, so now I have a little stock of embellishments set aside for some new pages.

I trimmed round another bunch of flowers recently, too, to turn a Gossamer Blue Life Pages card into a motif to put on my layout for this month's Inspiration Hop. It's going to go live on Instagram Friday 15th at midnight GMT, that's 4pm PST or 7pm EST.

Let me see, what else? Did I tell you I've discovered a knitting group to go to? Thanks to my blogging friend Helena, who has posted with pleasure about the group she found, I was encouraged to keep on looking here; and I now have an invite for a meet up next week. I'm thinking maybe I should get a move on and finish the plain black socks I'm working on, so I can take something a little more interesting. One pair down:

and one more to go. It's a special order for Uncle Dave, who took several pairs back with him after his Christmas visit, and was offered another two. I'm nearly there. And secretly I'm a little chuffed that there has been a bit of a delay in fulfilling that promise, because I now have labels to wrap my socks in. I found them via Winwick Mum's blog (a must read if you knit socks! or, if you knit at all, have a look at her post on Therapeutic Knitting) here at Buttons: a Blog About Creating

More printing and cutting. Aren't they clever?

And, yes, I've been reading about knitting, too. Here's what I was thinking: I can knit a sock by going round and round on a circular needle until I have a tube. And a tube is basically a sweater, without sleeves. But sleeves are also tubes, and all of that can also be achieved by - yep - knitting round and round on circular needles. So I may be about to go large. But of course you know me well enough by now to recognise that I never start anything without looking at the book first. Top Down Sweaters is written by the same knitter, Ann Budd, who did the very first, basic sock book I ever read Getting Started Knitting Socks. It's a sign. Has to be. I'll let you know what happens next. In the meantime, how about 21 Original Definitions Of Creativity, just in case you need some help getting started on a new project too.

Knit, Forget-Me-Knot

I like to make stuff. But even more, I like to make stuff with a purpose. So, for one evening this week, I put down the socks (which are only, really, for my fun, even if this week's model is a pair suitable for an Accountant At Work); and I picked up a pair of needles longer than I've been used to. I found some scraps of 4 ply in blue ( handy, these sock leftovers) and I started to knit a few forget-me-knots.

This is a project I spotted on Miriam's Blog. The Alzheimer's Society is hoping for 3000 forget-me-knots to use as a grand fundraising display in May. I imagine it a little like the red poppies at the Tower of London - remember how amazing that was? - this time in blue and soft: crocheted, knitted, sewn, for Dementia Awareness. I have twelve made and I hope to get them sent off this week. I'm sure they'll take all they can get: here's a little more about it:

I pulled out my book of knitted and crocheted flower patterns (100 Flowers To Knit & Crochet by Lesley Stanfield) just for inspiration: there is a crochet pattern in there, but no knitted one, so I used the one on the Alzheimer's site here. It doesn't take long to make a bunch: but just think what they'll all look like together...

Sock Of The Month

My blogging friend Jo crocheted a blanket last year. It's a beautiful thing (see it here): she calls it her mood blanket; and it's a clever record of how she felt in 2015, with the colour of each square chosen to match her spirits each day. I thought of Jo as I cast on a new pair of socks last week (let's be honest, I cast on a new pair of socks almost every week). These socks are plain black

knitted on 2.5mm circular needle, with Regia Extra Twist Merino from Janette's Rare Yarns

and they did indeed echo my temper on the day I waved Uncle Dave off to the States after Christmas at home. Black, they are, fine knit, formal, back to work socks: difficult to work on in the early morning or late evening, if I have time for a row or two. January socks, then. Definitely January socks.

Way back months ago I had an idea that in 2106 I would knit a different patterned pair each month - in the spirit of Jo's mood blanket - and although I had imagined something a little more ingeniously linked ( a tartan pair for Hogmanay, maybe?), I guess I'll have to make do with these to represent the start of the year. Way back when I had even started gathering ideas on my socks Pinterest board

How about a pair with a heart motif for February? I'm not sure if those will happen, because I know perfectly well that I have promised a pair to a friend who has been waiting long enough. But maybe they could work for February? They'll be sent with love, after all. Pictures soon! February is almost here

Socks, Sticking, Saturday

Well that was the week that got away from me. Most of it has been spent catching up after our weekend away; but I do have to own up to the odd ten minutes (here, there and everywhere) I've been using to get to know my new pal Instagram. This former refusnik has been very much enjoying catching up with blogging friends who have been hanging out there for a while now. It's good to reconnect. And it's so fast! So simple to reply, to say hello. But maybe you already know that? If you're there, do give me a shout @fromhighinthesky

And socks. There are always socks: easy to pick up in the evenings, satisfyingly quick to finish; and with the prospect of a story at the end of each pair.

What do I do with the stories? Stick 'em in my sock notebook, of course. You'll have heard the first one if you drop by here often: it was worth adding to the record, I thought.

And the second? Ah, the second. A good blogging friend sent me a ball of sock wool she had rescued and I took it very gratefully and put it aside for just the right project. Then I heard of another good blogging friend who is in the middle of radiotherapy, and I thought sending soft socks could be a way for me to show I was thinking about her. When she told me that her favourite colour is purple, I knew what that gift ball was meant for. Round it goes..