Socks and Chickens

Chicken pox that is. It is now E's turn to be all spotty. He has it much worse than H did, he's all spotty and itchy poor thing. Good thing that we have lots of the anti-histamine meds left from H. And sunburn lotion. Other than the itching he's quite happy to be at home and build lego's all day. And today we're making cinnamon buns, yum! E likes cooking and baking so a day without little sister at home is a good opportunity for him to play in the kitchen. H is a bit too messy yet.


I made it into Sock Madness, and my group has been published. I'm much honoured to be a part of Stephanie's Travelling Sock Division. They haven't published a post about the name yet but I assume that they mean Yarn Harlot, I love her! But oh my, some competition! Aija of Knitty fame (she designed the RPM socks!), Stariel who knit 50(!) pairs of socks last year, and *the* miss Lime are just a few. Stressed out? Who? Me!? Nah... I just want to finish my current pair OTN before next Saturday, that's all. Here's the first one:

And here's a closeup of the stitch pattern:

The colour is most accurate on the first picture.
You may notice that it doesn't look like Conwy at all... because it's not! I didn't want to fiddle so much right now to make that pattern work for my size so I did something completely different instead :-) I recently got Priscilla Gibson-Roberts' Plain Socks so I'm trying out her sock recipie. I haven't quite got the hang of it, the toe looks good, the heel not so much, I'll be more careful with sock nr 2. The stitch pattern is from Sensational Knitted Socks, it's the Corded Rib on page 38. Very easy to work and learn by heart, and I like the look of it too. The Lorna's Laces are behaving nicely too on 64 sts. When I tried out Conwy on 72 sts it pooled rather badly.

I'm using my new Brittany Birch dpn's, 2.25 mm. I must say that they are so-so. The length is great and the surface is fine, though the tips could be a little more pointy. The problem is they feel so fragile! They bend in my hands even when knitting plain, and k2tog feels like they are going to break every time, brr. 2.25 mm is not a standard size here in Sweden so it's hard to get. My other set is metal Addis and they are way too slippery, they actually fall out of my knitting. I have to find something in between, metal but not slippery.

Now I think I'll go back to obsessing over the best yarns for Sock Madness... see ya!