It's not easy being green

I finished the lime green mystery socks at the weekend and felt a huge black lime green cloud lift from my shoulders. I do love these socks, I think the pattern looks good (particularly the way the diagonals go in opposite directions so when I stand with my feet together they point in towards each other) and the twisted stitches and little cables were interesting to knit. I adore the yarn, it’s soft and squishy and such a beautiful, vibrant shade BUT oh my goodness they took a lot of knitting. They also took a lot of yarn! I haven’t weighed them but I did have to use my third skein of Claudia Handpainted Yarn (the colourway is Limeade) to knit the last few repeats of pattern on the foot and the toes. I am glad they are finished and I will wear them with pride.

The picture of them hanging on the sock blockers does not give an entirely accurate colour, nor does this one though it’s closer to the reality of these lovely limey socks. I understand there are colours that the naked eye can see which cannot be picked up by a camera but my camera really doesn’t do colour very well. It always looks a bit washed out. I have tried different backgrounds, I always use natural light, I’ve taken pictures inside and out with the light from all directions using every mode on the camera…it just isn’t great. I expect I’ll replace it at some point but not any time soon, for now I shall just do my best.

When I was getting ready to graft the toes of my beautiful lime socks I made myself a cup of tea using this cup:

I put it on this lovely coaster purchased at the Black Sheep Brewery:

I went in this case to retrieve a darning needle:

I thought wow…that’s a lot of green!

I do love green so, it is my most favourite colour. I am not sure exactly when this transition occurred as whilst I’ve never had anything against green as a colour it certainly wasn’t my favourite as a child. I loved pinks and reds and purples but over the last couple of years I have moved away from that and settled myself into a love affair with the colour green. There is hardly a shade of it I don’t like from pale, minty greens to more brown olive greens and even the school uniform coloured bottle green…I love them all. I am wearing a green dress today with a green beaded bracelet, a necklace with a green pendant and green sparkly nail polish on my toenails. Green, green, green. Strangely perhaps green is my mother’s favourite colour and my great aunt’s favourite colour. Maybe it’s a family thing. I don’t know. I just love it.

I decided I needed a new project, I do have a cardigan on the go but it’s in an aran weight wool blend and the sleeves lay quite heavily on my lap in the current hot weather, I wanted something light and airy. I do have other socks on the go but I wanted something that is not socks. Something pretty…not pretty…something with the potential to be beautiful, classy, proper grown up knitting. I went to my stash and pulled out some laceweight yarn, spent an hour carefully hand winding it with the skein wrapped across my knees to prevent an awful tangle (I'm not good at winding balls of yarn and usually enlist the help of my mother who winds whilst I hold the skein between outstretched hands). I cast on just before bed but only knit the first row.

The colour? Well what else…


Merino and mulberry silk laceweight in "Gooseberry" from Violet Green