Noro Taiyo S10B

In a fit of flagellation I wound up (untangled) a ball of Noro Taiyo, in colour S10B, from stash.

50% Cotton 17% Wool 17& Nylon 16% Silk

Size Medium, knit with the 72 cylinder and 36 ribber on the Verdun 47.

I don't mind wrestling with the devil, as long as I win...

DGB Confetti 1001

From my stash of DGB Confetti - two 50g balls of colourway #1001. 75% Wool; 25% Nylon.

Cranking up on the Verdun 47 with the 72 needle cylinder and 36 needle ribber (already removed from doing the 1x1 cuff).

In the picture above I've just completed knitting the leg and have raised half my needles in preparation of knitting the short row heel.

This pair is a Size Medium (Men's 7 - 9; Ladies 8.5 - 10.5).

After a beautiful summer's day on Sunday, a return to blistering winter on Monday, and hell seeming to freeze over on Tuesday - it was nice to knit some cheery bright colours of socks!

Newspaper Socks

And old joke from when I was a kid:

What's Black and White and Red all over?

A newspaper (black and white; read all over).

So here are my Newspaper Socks!

Black and White - Fortissima Socka #2021, which is a strand of white plied with a strand of black - for the heels, toes and a little accent stripe under the cuff. And for the body of the sock, Fortissima Socka 2003 which is a very very bright red. Love it!


And the flip side of those socks:

And for something on the very mild side... a basic grey sock (Fortissima 2057) with a simple black narrow accent stripe under the cuff and at the beginning of the toe.

I actually set out to knit this pair in grey alone with no accents.

I just couldn't do it!

Building a Sock

Pictorial: building a sock, from start to finish...

Koigu Colours

Here are some socks I finished up this week, all Koigu KPPPM and all in size Small:

KPPPM P107A

KPPPM P163

KPPPM P463

KPPPM P735

That tops up my collection of Koigu Small, and this week I'll be working on topping up my Koigu Mediums.

Koigu Rainbow

There was a beautiful rainbow over the farm the other night as I went to bring in the flock. By the time I got my camera out of my pocket, and swatted a few mosquitoes, the clouds had begun to move in. Still, it was a beauty.

It inspired my to reprise my Koigu Rainbow Socks.

In the pic above I am just completing a heel in KPPPM mixed rainbow colour P822. The kind folks at Koigu made this colourway at my request, incorporating the specific dye colours in the colours I selected for my rainbow stripes.

The individual colours are: 

Red - P816

Orange - P 603
Yellow - P521
Green - P 819
Blue - P451
Purple - P809

Size Small, knit with the 54 needle cylinder and 27 slot ribber dial on the Legare 400. 1x1 Ribbed top and rest in stockinette. Heels and toes reinforced with Wooly Nylon.

There are no rainbows today - totally overcast and a cold raining drizzle. So its nice to at least be working with sunny colours.

Pasture Inspiration

The rich greens of the spring pastures have inspired me to knit green socks!

Koigu KPPPM in colour P926 (my favourite green), knit with my Verdun 47 sock knitter, 72 needle cylinder and 36 slot ribber. Working in Size Large.

Starting to construct the 1 x 1 ribbed top after laying in the reverse e-wrap selvedge.

The ribbed top complete, and beginning to knit the leg.

Working a short row heel, adding wooly nylon for reinforcement.

Out and Over

I sprung Little Wee Ewe 314B and her lamb from the barn this morning and they rejoined the flock out on the pasture.

I checked on her a few times this morning to make sure her lamb was keeping up, and then checked again at lunch time.

There she is, and this is just what I like to see - the lamb right with her. She may be wee but her mothering skills are BIG.

With that, I declare Lambing 2015 officially over. According to my records there is one yearling left un-lambed but she may not have been bred, may have had a lamb and escaped my vigilant eye, and may lamb some time later. I'll presume she's not bred and will carry on as if.

In celebration, I knit some socks.

I've barely been out in the wool shack during lambing season and am anxious to get back at it. And not just a little surprised that several pair flew off the knitter in short order without any train wrecks.

The above pair is size XL (Men's 13 - 15) knit with double strands of my 70/30 Shetland/Nylon lace weight yarn. The cuffs, heels and toes are in double Fawn and the body in one strand of Fawn plus one strand of Brown. I knit a bundle of these socks in Small, Medium, and Large until interrupted by lambing and now I'll top of the set with some XL and XS before moving on to other projects.

In between lambing checks, puppy training and Easter singing I manged to do a rebuild of my website. Goodness knows I was happy with the old site, but the code it was written in needed updating to keep up with internet security specs and it was actually easier to do a total rebuild than to try and adapt.

I'm not a coding person. I just pick away using the monkey-see monktey-do method and slowly things take shape. Hey - just like knitting!

The new site is a work in progress. The deadline for code update was last week and I was able to get far enough along to launch but I've still got a lot of content tweaking to do, and my photo formatting was all lost so I'll have to start re-shooting photos. Ugh.

On nice thing - the new site is responsive - it can detect if it is being viewed on a desktop, tablet or phone, and even if the phone or tablet are being held in portrait or landscape position. I had a bit of a dummy-up version of this with the old site that recognized phones, but this is a more savy rendition.


There are over 2500 code files in the web site, many with thousands of lines of code.

 I can't believe I ate the whole thing!