Little Things

Is the above yarn the most horrid ever? I just can't make my mind up. Anyway, putting that aside, this is one of my easy projects that I can do without having to give my all. The socks will be an ordinary woven stitch, although you can't see that, as the colours are so in your face. I don't think it's just that the combinations of colours are odd, it's the fact that the colours change every couple of stitches and this creates a very busy and overpowering effect. I had some Koigu like that but it wasn't such a problem as the colours were nicer. On the plus side, the yarn is very, very soft (it's Lana Grossa).



The socks in the photos above and below are the Bluebell Rib socks. The ones that took at least ten attempts (with various patterns, needles and stitch-counts). They are very pretty but I've knitted them too small (jinxed from the start?) and so they've not only made my finger numb (it's still slightly numb and that was about six weeks/two months ago) but if I wear them they actually make my feet ache, they're so tight. I've come to the conclusion that the problem is that my ankles are skinnier than the rest of the foot. If I knit the sock to fit the foot comfortably, I get bagginess around the ankle. I read that, in that case, a longer heel flap should do the trick, which I'd been suspecting. Has anyone else had this problem?




The photo below is of Charles in his hat. I had a spare ball of Cashsoft DK and knitted this Odessa the other evening. So satisfying and so lovely and easy. The hardest part was trying to take a photo of a two and a half year old dashing about like a, well, two and a half year old. I tried bribing him but it didn't work. He will wear this hat on our many walks in the woods.

I keep forgetting to mention that one of the first sort-of sentences Charles came out with was "knit. my. sock" in a quite menacing way. He was trying to say he didn't need my interference with his game at that point in time, and that I should just go and knit. I nearly fell over, I was so proud of him and also the fact that he recognised I knitted his socks! That was some time ago. He's a real chatterbox now and makes up the most funny and amusing tall stories. If I think back to six weeks ago, he hardly spoke at all, I mean he had quite a large vocabulary but didn't string anything together.

Now I'm on a roll, I'll tell you about his potty-training. He did it - in one day. Honestly. I'd been putting it off as I didn't want to do it too early, so we'd have less of a risk of him feeling like he'd "failed". And also because I just wasn't looking forward to it. One Monday morning I showed him the potty and the pants and explained the game-plan and he just did it. We had one accident immediately after and then......potty-trained. I still can't get over it. I guess he was just ready.

Got to go. Charlie's waving a parsnip at me from the kitchen and saying "I want dinner. Help me, Mummy". It's too early for dinner. And so arises another series of negotiations......

I've started on the Edwardian Lace thingie and am two pattern-repeats in, with another twenty six to do! Will post all about it in the next few days.