Manly sock in progress

Oh knitting, how I am missing you.

My knitting is currently not getting beyond a couple of rounds on a sock a day at the moment, one reason for this, the in-laws are coming. Well not only that, I also keep having to do other things after work through the week but it's the in-law visit that is causing the biggest problem. The problem is that my primary knitting time, evenings at home after work, is being replaced with madly cleaning, tidying and gardening. Even my precious Saturday, my day where I really can get stuck into knitting was spent clearing the garden as it was the first nice weekend day in what feels like forever. I spent 6 hours gardening, simply no time to knit.

Not helping the situation is having two weekends away in a row (first and second weekend in May) which meant getting behind on some little jobs, neither of those weekends provided much in the way of knitting opportunity either, it's very frustrating.

I do have some progress to show you, am still working away on my husband's socks (the first one of the pair anyway) and am well into the foot now. I've knit about 8" of foot, only need to knit another 2 inches or so before I can start decreasing for the toe. You did read that correctly, 10" before starting toe decreases…my husband's feet are in the region of 12" long! It truly is a labour of love knitting socks for him. After knitting a pair for his Christmas gift I said I wouldn't be making more. He wears that pair so often though that I decided he totally deserved more and he even picked out his own yarn, how could I say no? I just hope I have enough yarn!! I should do as the yardage is the same as on the yarn I used for the first pair and I haven't made them any longer in the leg, I've also gone up a needle size and down 4 in the stitch count. Should be fine.

I am still working on my mystery socks. Clue 3 is out now, clue 4 is out on Saturday and I've almost finished the first repeat of clue 2 for each sock! Well behind. I just hope that on Sunday evening when the beloved in-laws have departed I can really get down to some serious knitting with no interuptions or distractions. I need everything to slow down a bit, I'd rather like a break!

It feels like I am a million miles away from having any FOs to share and I am quite frustrated with it.

More socks

I didn't realise it had been so long since I last posted, what a bad blogger I am! I have been very busy with stupid life getting in the way of all the fun stuff though.

We spent the bank holiday weekend camping in Masham and I didn't take any knitting with me! It was too cold to even manipulate my fingers anyway though, I hadn't a chance! I was very grateful for my thick and lovely hat knit using Rowan Big Wool though which kept my head warm even if the rest of me was still freezing under 4 layers of clothes!

This weekend was once again spent away from home visiting Mr Northernmonkey's family in North Wales. This time I did take knitting, both socks for myself and the socks for my husband. The socks for myself are the more interesting of the two pairs. Whilst his are boring old stockinette mine have lovely travelling twisted stitches and were designed by the ever exciting and talented Cookie A. They were designed for the Sock Knitters Anonymous group on Ravelry and are a "mystery sock" so you get clues week by week and don't know what the sock will look like until you've knit the final clue. It's very exciting. Still I'm a slow knitter and so have seen what comes next as others have already finished the second clue, I finished the first clue and about six rows of the second.

The picture quality isn't great as I used the camera on my mobile phone but you get the idea. The yarn is Claudia handpainted in a colourway called Limeade and if you can believe it the green is brighter than this picture shows!!