Now a sick sloth.

In the evening after I wrote my last post, a mere four days ago, I realised I had a bit of a sore throat. Nothing awful – a bit of a scratchy feeling that almost everyone in the UK has at present. Not so the next morning. Full on streaming cold, coughing, sneezing, and verging on deaf from time to time. Not funny, and it got worse later in the day when I started getting giddy, off balance, spells – presumably all connected with the stupid ear clearing problems. Cue a day sulking on the sofa, which has turned into several.

Now, I am probably in with a whole bunch of you who spent a few days after the holidays sorting out stash. I included my yarn stash and was quietly amazed at how much sock yarn I had. Yes, I like knitting socks. No, they rarely use up all the yarn. Why not make use of this ‘leftover’ yarn to make socks. There was certainly enough of it. There was other yarn too but we can gloss over that for the moment.

I spent some time blog hopping and generally  wasting time researching online and saw references to knitting two socks at once. I have used other videos from Knit Purl Hunter when I have been uncertain and can recommend them with great confidence. This is a way to ensure a matching pair no matter how random your yarn selection is (provided you divide it into two balls to knit from). My brain definitely wasn’t up to using multiple balls of yarn so I selected a couple of balls that ‘sneaked’ into my last yarn order from the Wool Warehouse.

Toe up socks – two at once!

The yarn is Drops Fabel print which is 75% Wool, 25% Polyamide in common with most sock yarn. It forms a sort of ‘fair isle’ pattern as you knit. I have knitted lots of socks, not all blogged – after all, how many pairs of socks are interesting? – so I was confident that my brain could handle that but would it cope with two at once? Initially it was a bit difficult until the toe increases had been completed. Not brain difficult – just difficult to maneuver the stitches in the way I needed in such small numbers.  After the increases I went into ‘automatic pilot’ and just knitted a few rows (circuits?) at a time between reading a book, watching tv, making tea, and listening to a podcast. They are coming on fairly well now, as you can see, and the instep increases have been completed. I’m a little worried about the heel turn because at the moment I’m not sure I have the brain capacity for that despite feeling a good deal better.

Going back to the podcast – am I the last person on the planet not to have heard of ‘Serial’  ? My daughter recommended it while she was here at Christmas and it seemed like a good ‘I don’t actually have to do anything and can still enjoy this’ activity. Hooked. I’m still uncertain if this is fact or fiction. Feel free to tell me if you know – it wont spoil it for me.

I have done some work on the brown trousers. Only the waistband and hem to be completed now. The fabric has turned out to be much stretchier than I had anticipated so I am still dithering about what to use as interfacing to stabilise the waistband.

Thanks for all the suggestions as to what I could use the fabrics I showed in the last post for. There are some really good ideas there but, again, I am dithering about choices. I will let you know when I decide.

Before I leave you can anyone tell me when Vicks Vapour Rub became VapoRub? I’m sure it worked better when it was spelled properly.

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