Let's banish winter gloom

Type #knityellowsocks into Instagram ....

I posted an image the other day of a few of my recent finished items which all had green in them and someone made the very apt comment that it showed a longing for Spring. A few of you said the same and it got me wondering about the impact of colour on our mood.

On these darker mornings in the northern hemisphere colour can really have an impact on our mood. I think it might be time to dust off last year's #knityellowsocks initiative. 

February is all about socks anyway over on our Everyday Knitter Facebook group so you could double dip and make your challenge socks in yellow yarn or go wild and knit a second pair.

There's something about working with a bright yellow yarn first thing in the morning to really perk you up - well, that and a strong coffee.

Having to be a grown up

Sometimes being an adult isn't all its cracked up to be. In fact sometimes it's pretty pants.

For some weeks now I've been refusing to admit the blindingly obvious but now, hunkered down with my knitting and the first time alone with my thoughts all week, the blindingly obvious has finally made itself felt.

I can't go to Edinburgh Yarn Festival this year. Cue much wailing and gnashing of teeth.

DH needs to have a knee op (scheduled date also coincides with Unravel - but I'll gloss over that). His recuperation (and no airline travel) period means that he won't be able to fly with us to Edinburgh and I would have to take the boys on my own. He won't be mobile enough to take care of them at home and my parents are away on holiday that week.

I was fully intending to make it work but this morning I've realised the futility of what I'm trying to do. We would spend the weekend trying to cram in all the sightseeing the boys want to do and all the yarn shopping/sniffing/chatting that I want to do and in reality no one will probably get to enjoy themselves very much at all.

Far better to be sensible and grown up and admit that this year it just isn't going to work. And if we want DH to get his knee sorted so that we can carry on doing team things we want to do as a family then we just need to accept that this year, we can't do some of the things we would like to.

It's the grown up and sensible thing to do, but right now I feel like being 5 and having a full on tantrum. I want to go! But there will be other years and other shows.

At the very least I need to plan a yarn shopping outing for that weekend as a treat. I may have to take a short trip down to Loop as an alternative.

I know it's the right decision but right now I'm just going to hide out under my blanket, eat chocolate and indulge my inner 5 year old in a full on sulk.

The weekend whips around again

Garter stitch in Cumbria DK from The Fibre Co.

My weeks seem to whizz past at the speed of light at the moment and before I know it Saturday morning is here again.

This weekend we are all down with a cold (again). Nothing serious but it gives us a good excuse to light the fire, pull up the drawbridge and hunker down for the weekend with good food and films.

I'm not sure I've got the hang of the whole Hyyge thing but I think our version is going to be pretty spot on this weekend.

I plan on doing a fair bit of knitting and apart from my sock designs my other commission has temporarily stalled whilst I await deliver of some particularly special yarn.

So it's time to pull out this simple garter stitch shawl and make some serious progress on it I think. After a few weeks in the WIP basket I think it's finally ready to tell me what it wants to be.

Whatever you're up to the weekend - I hope you manage to squeeze in some knitting too.

Blocking socks and making notes

Some days definitely feel more productive than others. It seems that with designing , as with so many things in life it is a case of 2 steps forward and 1 step back. Except that yesterday, after several consecutive days of backward steps I had a sudden sprint forward. New socks were blocked and photographed - in the 30 minutes of decent daylight that Essex has to offer at this time of year - patterns were drafted and charts charted.

Working a day job as well as designing has its ups and downs and there are times when I think I could be much more productive if I were to design full time. However, in my heart I know that at the moment I quite like the contrast between my two jobs. Being at my day job allows some space for my creative brain to have a bit of time off and to relax. Some of my best ideas pop into my head whilst commuting and it's not unknown for me to have to stop suddenly in a lay by to wrote something down (I know better than to rely on my memory).

Without the space created by my day job, that wouldn't happen and instead I fear that the constant pressure to create would be too much - my poor, flagging creative brain would just give up and wave a little white flag.

So for now, I'm content to be exactly where I want to be. Although if I didn't have to get up in the cold and dark to go to work on a Friday morning I would be really, quite happy.

I'll be quite honest, with everything that is going on in the world right now, me waffling on about my knitting seems irrelevant and inconsequential. Massive world events are taking place and much of the social media I see seems to be pretty hostile and angry right now.

It's not that I'm not knitting - I knit on through everything - it's just that I am struggling to write about it with everything else that is going on

One thing which has struck me though is the importance of keeping a positive outlook. It's easy to adopt a ' we're doomed' approach and run around panicking in the manner of Dad's Army or we can choose to see the positive and the uplifting in the everyday.

I read an article just this morning about how the women's March and the #pussyhat project has created a whole new wave of women (and men) keen to learn to knit. So much so that knitting stores in the US have chosen to lay on extra knitting classes at the weekend to cater to them all. More knitters has to be a good thing..right? Because knitters are amazing people who could probably move mountains given some sturdy yarn and some suitably sharp needles.

So, this week I am taking the decision to embrace a more positive outlook and rather than descending into Twitter- fuelled angst I am looking for practical things you can do to make a difference.

Some ideas which I came up with are:

Clear out some stash and donate it to Knit for Peace.

Donate unwanted toiletries or clothes to a local shelter.

Check out the Women's March London 10 Actions project.

Donate to or promote the work of a charity close to your heart.

I'm sure you can come up with your own personal list of things things that are important to you. But your challenge for today is to look for the positive in the everyday stuff and if it involves yarn, so much the better.

Rookie error

In an alternative world this sock, given the amount of time I've spent on it should be well past the heel by now. One of the pitfalls of designing of course is that a fair amount of ripping out is required from time to time but this time the errors are entirely of my own making.

The intended design is fairly cable heavy with additional twisted stitches and the design is already charted and good to go. All I had to do was knit it.

The first two attempts went wrong when I mis-crossed cables. Apparently I never learnt that knitting late at night with tired eyes and dim lighting could lead to problems. Third time lucky though and I was well on my way down the cuff. Cables were looking good, the stitch definition looked fantastic. Things were going well. 

But wait. I had cast on my standard 64st and totally forgotten to allow for the fact that cables draw the fabric in and make the resulting sock circumference narrower. A good rule of thumb normally is to add half the number of stitches that you need for each cable. So if you have 2 cables which each involve 6 stitches you would need to add 2x3=6 stitches to keep the final circumference the same.

So it was a case of ripping back again, adding in the correct number of stitches and away we go again. This time...I've definitely got it right...