more finished socks

I've finished the other pair of socks that I was working on... they are the embossed leaves from the interweaves book of favourite socks. I was so close to finishing the second sock when I ran out of yarn. Luckily the yarn shop had another skein in the same colour, and even the same dye lot, so it wasn't the end of the world - just a shame to be so close. I weighed the remains of the new ball after I'd finished - it was bought as a 100g skein, and according to my "not so precise" scales it still weighs 100g.

I think this is a really nice stitch pattern, not too girly but interesting. I'm tempted to make a pair for my Mum too.

So now I will spend a few days trying to make a dent in the Jacob cardigan I seem to have been knitting for ages - I think this has stalled as I don't seem to be able to do the cabling in company. I've cast on the first sleeve, so should be able to concentrate on the cabling at home and still be able to work on it in company.

Once that's a bit further on I'll allow myself to cast on some more socks - we met up with Cecilie yesterday and she brought me bounty that she'd bought in China - it's mostly sock weight yarn, although there are a couple of balls of even finer. She chose some very "Deborah" colours - greens, browns, blues and a bit of red - lots of mulling over and plotting are in order.

Enough yarn?

I'm making good progress on the embossed leaves socks that I'm knitting - the picture below is the second sock, and as you can hopefully see I'm on the homeward straight now that I'm onto the foot. I'm a little concerned that I'm going to run out of yarn though as the small ball in the photo is all I have left. I think it's going to be close.

And yes, the area behind the bench is our lawn - it looks a bit pitiful at the moment, but it's currently undergoing some re-seeding.

Things are growing in the garden, this is a picture of our tomato, pepper and chili plants. There's flowers on both the toms and the chilies (or maybe they're on the peppers, I can't remember which pot is which!), but they seem to be quite liking their sheltered spot. I'll be interested to see if we get much fruit, or if next years will have to be grown inside.

I found a recipe yesterday that we had for dinner, it was very tasty, so I thought I would share. We had sweet potato ravioli with toasted pine nuts, sage and rocket. The recipe can be found here. Typically we didn't have all the ingredients, so replaced the fresh sage with dried sage and the rocket with some chard from the garden. I did plant some rocket seeds the other day to give us a few more leaves to pick, but they're not up yet. And I will get a sage plant. So no doubt we will try the recipe again with the full set of ingredients to hand. You really can't beat freshly made pasta - it's so easy to make.

pre wedding update

I haven't been very good at blogging recently. I've been in more of a do mood than a talk about doing of having done mood - and so the blog has suffered. There's been lots to do recently with wedding stuff and knitting etc to keep me busy. We fly back to the UK tomorrow so there won't be any blogging until we're back at the beginning of the 2nd week of June, so I thought I'd better have a quick update of the ikke ferdig progress...

here we have the sailor sock with the heel turned

And here we have the first embossed leaf sock finished.

I knit to the heel turn on both of these and then had them around in case Cecilie needed visual aid while she turned her first heel. Her heel passed by without incident and so I can now get on and get both of these finished. I'll take them both with me to the UK and hopefully get some knitting done between enjoying real ale in real pubs and walking.

And then we have the first little bit of the second front of the Jacob cardigan - kind of a token cast on.

So, a bit of sock knitting in the UK and maybe a look in the rowan shop (which sounds dangerous).

I'm sure I'll blog more when we get back....

Greening

First of all I wanted to show you the difference 10 days makes. The first of these two pictures was taken on April 27th, and the second this morning on May 7th.

Shame I didn't take them both from the same spot, but I think you can see that things are definitely greening up nicely. Those bushes at the far side of our garden are lilacs, and in the gap that shows the neigbouring house I've planted some fruit bushes, a rhubarb and also a little philadelphus cutting. They're all only little so will take some time to make a difference.

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I seem to have three knitting projects on the go at the moment. All are making progress:

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Firstly we have my jacob cardigan, I'm getting through the cables on the left front at the moment. I was a little worried it was going to be too small, but I did a bit of comparison with another zipped cardigan I have and I think it's going to be OK - not super baggy or anything, but OK.

Secondly we have my sailor stitch sock from more sensational knitted socks - these are paused at the moment so that I can knit the heel at the same time as Cecilie knits the first heel of her first sock. I'm really liking the subtle colour changes on the Trekking Pro Natura and the wool/bamboo mix is really light and fine - I'm hoping these might be a less warm socks that can be worn all year round.

And while I'm waiting for then I've cast on a second pair of socks, these are going to be the embossed leaves sock by Mona Schmidt from Favorite Socks. The leaves are just starting to show. I'm using some Finish wool called Veto. The colour hasn't come out very well on this photo, it's more a soft green/blue. The Veto is a wool/nylon blend and seems very thick in comparison to the trekking.

I would imagine both of the sock projects will go with me to the UK when we go to get married - two weeks tomorrow we fly.