Knitting much happened

Back in the woods and at the end of the road is a magical place.

Its hardly fair to start that way for the first blog post of the week, but there you have it. Mr Needles has all the good photos, and has not yet downloaded them here at home. Pictures, maybe even an entire blog post later this week. Our camping was lovely except for the part where there was rain on Saturday night, the back door seal leaked and my part of the bed was damp enough to mean I was chilled. Good thing that I had my trusty long johns along. When you camp in the mountains, long johns are the very first thing you learn to pack.

On several occasions, we had funny, not quite hail flake/pellets falling, and one morning we woke to a dusting of snow in the high peaks. Weather appropriate knitting happened.

Saturdays chill reminded me that I needed a toque, so I sat down and knitted these. The yarns are from the previously planned cast cover , which the new castee said would just be too warm to wear. Cloud Cotton is a simply wonderful thing to play with. Oh my, my. The toque is great, but the wristers need a little elastic help to keep their shape. I worked them up on 5 mm needles, but should probably have used 4 mm as I did with the hat. The hat served me well, and once the elastic has been added to beef up the resilience of the wristers, the set is going to be assigned to the van so that no matter where we roam, I will be warm. (The set has already seen heavy use.)

Sunday morning dawned warmer and I was left with a bit of a quandary. Do I knit that nice silk I had or do I go for a sock. While pondering this, I knit up some gauge swatches for the Cloud Cotton for one of many next projects. I'm not entirely satisfied with the way the fabric drapes when worked up on 4 mm needles or 4.5 mm needles so I am going to give it a go with some 5 mm needles sometime today. Using the Cloud Cotton Eco on the hats and wristers showed some of the properties of the yarn, but I have much to learn. A top knitted in this lovely cotton should have flow and drape to show off the softness of the fibre.

I choose not to work with the silk. The firewood at the campsite was mostly spruce and spruce spits and the sparks fly.I did knit with it on the way home, but the silk is too precious to have burned by a flying ember, so I choose some sock yarn.

The socks are made of one skein of a lovely bright yellow Regia yarn, and one skein of an unknown yarn with some very special properties. Both skeins are from my early stash period, purchased from River City Yarns little sale bin quite some time ago. The unknown yarn was an over dyed yarn for a dyeing class they were holding or that one of the RCY ladies took. Look at what interesting things are happening. Check out the toe area where I used only one of the yarns, and look at the patterning. (Once the toe was done, I worked alternating rows with the plain yellow yarn. The heels will be as the toe, only the over dye yarn and the cuff will be the plain yellow. That is, if all goes according to plan)

Knitting this was not just about the fun of a plain sock destined for a peasant heel, but also trying to figure out how a hand dye got these cool little 'Fair Isle' inspired areas followed by the near single rows of the blue and the red. Thinking about it occupied me for hours on end. I'll be trying this technique next time I play dyer. I have a suspicion there is math involved.

Now that I am back in the real world, I have old work to finish and new work beckoning and not just of the knitterly variety. I am off to the office shortly for a days worth of consulting packed into a big morning, a quick stop at Knitting Tuesdays, errands, groceries, lawn mowing and finally, maybe some little bit of relaxing evening knitting.

I have a sweater to finish this week, and a shawl, 3 pairs of socks, and a scarf. Surely something among these could, should, must get done before I start the next big thing, which is burning a hole in my mind.

Startitis? You bet.