Making friends - the Knitters way

A series of random late night tweets one night and I found myself gatecrashing a yarn crawl in London - visiting new-to-me yarn shops and making great yarny friends into the bargain.

A wall of wool, at Prick Your Finger

The route was carefully planned to include Prick Your Finger, Loop, Knit with Attitude and Wild and Woolly, ending in a pub - of course - and a knitting quiz.

The perils of childcare meant that I could only stay for the first 2 shops but the carefully planned itinerary meant that I was able to duck out after Loop and catch a bus back to Liverpool St.

Prick Your Finger was a shop I had heard much about but hadn't yet visited and so I was really pleased that we went there first. The owner, Rachel was really welcoming and we spent a happy time browsing her beautiful collections of yarn. She has a passion for supporting British and local producers and that really shone through in her choice of yarns. John Arbon, Excelana, Blakcer Yarns and others were all wonderfully displayed. She also stocks, buttons, jewellery, drop spindles and much more and we could have spent much longer there.

My carefully curated haul - much joy

Mini skeins kindly gifted by Amelia

Specially made stitch markers by OfBlitheSpirit

Next on the list was Loop in Islington. A true 'destination' yarn shop I had been to Loop once or twice before but I never pass up the opportunity to go and this time I was on a mission. I want to make the Laneway tunic by Veera Valimaki in grey and I knew that Loop stocks an impressive collection of The Uncommon Thread's sockweight yarn. No one does grey quite like Ce Ce and I was indeed spoilt for choice. Indeed I fear I embarrased myself somewhat by laying out all the different shades on the floor to better examine them.

Anyway, after much deliberating I made my selection and spent the rest of the visit with them clutched protectively to my chest. It was lovely to chat to the staff there and to put names to faces. The yarn crawl continued without me after that but I know that they had a great time - check out the hashtag #4plyyarncrawl on Twitter and Instagram to see what we got up to.

The midway point: Our collective haul

Huge thank you to Rae, Amelia and Alitzah for making the day such fun - we will have to do it again soon.

xx

Sock heaven

Now, heaven knows I have no shortage of socks on my needles at the moment. I have a complicated toe-up design which is currently tying my brain in knots. I have a straightforward sample knit which is quite relaxing, but suffering ever-so-slightly from 'second sock syndrome'. I have a plain pair of grey socks for my father in law which are languishing in the WIP pile - plain, grey, huge - not very appealing -say no more.

And then, into my sock knitting doldrums drops this little beauty:

The very talented Sparkleduck has produced a wonderful rainbow yarn in her fabulous Socka base, which produces two colours per round on a sock. The colourway is Warm Rainbow (in case you were wondering).

I can be a little colour-shy sometimes but this yarn positively sang to me and implored me to take it home and knit it...so I did:

I was dithering about whether to do an afterthought heel so as not to interrupt the stripes but in the end I plumped for my favourite Fish Lips Kiss Heel and I love the way the stripes work over the heel - great fun.

I was also a little worried about potential pooling and did consider a pattern designed to work with highly variegated yarn such as Hermione's Everyday socks but in the end I decided to just go with the flow. With 60st on 2.5mm needles the stripes worked up into a very pleasing sequence that is strangely hypnotic to knit.

I sock down, and 1 to go.

Sock yarn blankie

Don't worry, I won't bore you too much with photos of a mitered square blanket growing at a snails pace but once I month I will post a tally of how many squares I have completed. More as a means of keeping the project 'front and centre'. otherwise, I know what I'm like. It will slide to the bottom of my WIPs basket and then further into dusty oblivion before being rescued during a marathon cleaning attempt.

So In April I did a grand total of 40 squares - it has grown a little since this photo was taken - and I'm really enjoying it.

I am trying to stick to mainly UK indie dyers yarn - fortunately I have many (many) leftovers and am loving how all the different colours and tones come together.

Very addictive. Just need to keep reminding myself to pick it up at least every other day to keep the momentum going.