Hey, thanks.

Tricia, I went to Ravelry and bought a download of the Oliver sock pattern, just as you said, no prob. My previous attempt had been at the designer’s own website. If the pattern had been available there, it would have come in the mail. This way seems much simpler. I’ve printed it out.

And, Ted, thank you very much for the pointer to EZ’s form-fitted arch socks. I have long admired them (in Meg’s book “Knitting”), and I’ve got the Schoolhouse Press leaflet. I always thought the socks beyond me – it’s those stripes, as well as the shaping.

Vibeke Lind creates a somewhat similar effect with a cap, p. 91 of my copy of “Knitting in the Nordic Tradition”. (That’s one of my all-time must-have knitting books.) I knit that for my sister once, rather successfully. I don’t know quite why I thought I couldn’t do the socks.

It occurred to me yesterday that I can perfectly well do an Oliver foot on the bedsocks I am about to cast on. It will be an interesting trial run to discover how the shaping suits my husband’s foot. So I’ll do that. (I still have a row and a half of the Griswold to knit, plus the Kitchener’ing. I may not get the bed socks cast on until tomorrow).

Maybe if the Oliver proves as successful as Franklin's enthusiasm suggests, I'll try it one day with the stripes. But for the time being, I went to the Yarn Yard and bought a 100 gram skein of a sock yarn called, I think, Housebrick. It was kind of like a colourway she once had called, I think, Glasgow Tenement, which went so fast that I never got any. In this case, I’ve bought the last skein. The idea is to knit my husband some full-size Olivers, if the pattern works for him.

As if I needed sock yarn.

(I noticed that the Yarn Yard is beginning to sell the new yarn, “Clan”, without saying much about it. It’s listed as “new for September”. Mrs Yarn Yard had some of it with her at Annie Modesitt’s Combination Knitting class recently, along with things that she and a test knitter had been doing with it. It’s awfully nice, and exclusive to her.)

This spending spree of mine has got to stop – it’s something to do with the equinox, I’m sure. As things stand, knitterly materials will be washed ashore here with every tide for some time to come. I added one more this morning, too: "Custom Knits" on your recommendations, Angel and Raveller.

Non-knit

We had most of the doorstep tomato crop for lunch yesterday. Delicious.


I recently bought myself what I believe may be called a USB hub, and I’m still at the stage where it seems a great luxury to be able to connect the camera without first crawling about on the floor to unplug the flash drive.