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.