Socks Yarns & Travel

It was good to meet people behind the names of some favourite yarn companies at the Edinburgh Yarn Festival. I also acquired a few skeins of their 4ply/fingering weight yarn to sustain my current enthusiasm for sock knitting. They are as follows:

John Dunn-Ballam - Easyknits - Gobstoppers - Hanzo Tokyo - Hand Dyed - 75% superwash Merino, 25% Nylon

Lyndsey Roberts - The Border Tart - Blue Moon - Hand Dyed Natural Indigo - 75% Superwash BFL, 35% Nylon

Yvonne McSwinney - Dublin Dye - Swing Sock - Water Sprite 75% Merino 25% Nylon

Recently I completed a pair of the Basic Ribbed Socks by Kate Atherley. I enjoyed the simple straightforward design so much I cast on another pair of socks using this pattern in the Easyknits Hanzo Tokyo. The yarn is producing some bold broad stripes in contrasting colours of charcoal, grey, burgundy and gold. A great travel knitting project, not too much thinking and small enough to carry around.

 

Bertie's Shetland Wool Jumper

Image courtesy of Bouncing Bertie

This is the very handsome, Bertie. He lives with my lovely neighbour Gail. She's been trying out some of the undyed wool yarn from my Shetland sheep and knitted Bertie this gorgeous jumper. The starting point for the design was The Perfect Fit Top-Down Dog Sweater by Jessika Lane on Ravelry. 

Image Travelling Tree Designs

Bertie seems to think his owners knitting experience is somewhat limited, however, I would disagree. Gail not only calculated the size and perfect fit but she also incorporated a fair isle motif into the plain sweater design. You can read how she designed the sweater here Too much woolly thinking?

Image courtesy of Bouncing Bertie

Bertie is a very intelligent wire-hair fox terrier and has his own blog, you can read more about his adventures and 'unique take on life' with Gail on Bouncing Bertie's Blog. His thoughts about his new jumper can be found in this post, "Finished at last, but is it Sunday best?"

As you can see Bertie also likes to pose for the camera!

Image courtesy of Bouncing Bertie

Image courtesy of Bouncing Bertie

Image courtesy of Bouncing Bertie

Cast off and finished...

Enjoyed knitting these simple socks from the pattern by Kate Atherley. The rib all the way down from the cuff really helps keep the socks from falling down. I think I'll be using the pattern again. Cast on details can be found in my earlier post here.

Edinburgh Weekend

Enjoyed a weekend in Edinburgh, attended the Edinburgh Yarn Festival,  managed to visit a few other places too...

McAree's were exhibiting at the Yarn Festival but a nice surprise to find their knitting shop around the corner from where we were staying in Edinburgh, New Town.

Needed more time to make the most of a visit to the Scottish National Gallery.

Wallpaper in the 'ladies' at The Rail Bridge Bistro

View of the Forth Rail Bridge from our table at The Rail Bridge Bistro.

Sunday morning breakfast at Leo's Beanery, Howe Street, Edinburgh.

Lovely coffee at Leo's Beanery!

Easy Knit Basic Ribbed Socks

This skein of Cherish, 'Spring Bloom' Easyknits yarn has been waiting for a project since I purchased it nearly a year ago at Guthrie & Ghani (the shop owner is Lauren, a finalist in the first BBC Sewing Bee show) where I attended the first birthday party at the haberdashery back in April 2014.

Easyknits Cherish - Spring Bloom - 80% Superwash Merino 10%, Cashmere 10%, Nylon 4ply, 400m/100g

Easyknits.co.uk is a small indie yarn/fibre dyers based in southeast London, UK. It's run by Jon Dunn-Ballam (easyknitter on Ravelry or Twitter). Jon is a knitter, knitwear designer and dyer. He started at the age of six, being taught by his Gran. He started dying his own colourways when he couldn't get the colour range he wanted.

Easyknits will be exhibiting at the Edinburgh Yarn Festival 14-15 March 2015 and I'm looking forward to see them there.

Searching for a quick and simple sock pattern I found the free Basic Ribbed Socks by Kate Atherley on Ravelry. It's a top down sock design and has well written instructions in 6 sizes. There were at the time I downloaded the pattern about 6,000 projects on Raverly - so tried, tested and very popular.

Kate has this to say about her pattern,

“I love to solve problems… and to knit. This sock design was developed as a solution to two irksome issues: socks with a plain stocking-stitch leg tend to fall down, and I find k1p1 ribbing tedious. And so,the basic ribbed sock was born.”

After winding the skein onto a centre pull ball, casting on and completing the first sock fairly quickly, the only issue was the centre pull ball of yarn. This is supposed to pull out easily but yarn had spilled out of the centre (which I left unattended as I worked on) and become a tangled web.  Before casting on the second sock there was a long delay while I untangled the mess and rewound the yarn. Now using the ball from the outer edge for the second sock and hopefully no tangles to sort out.