Little to report.

Socks

I finished the first anthracite sock, and it’s an absolutely super sock – although it hasn’t been tried on yet. I started the second one, and didn’t get very far. I start a sock (perhaps everyone does) by casting on all the stitches over two needles held together. Then slip out one of the needles and knit the stitches, in pattern, onto three needles. (I like doing the body of the sock on four needles, knitting with a fifth, but for some reason prefer one fewer when ribbing.)

And finally, on what amounts to the second round, I join the dangling confusion into a circle. And this time I found, half way around the first circuit, that I was knitting with the long tail of the long-tail cast on. We’ve all done it. I was able to tink back, so didn’t have to start again.

We have a routine diabetic appt at the Royal Infirmary tomorrow. Those appts always involve a lot of sitting about, waiting for the results of blood tests. I’d like to finish the ribbing.

Sky scarf

I stood for a moment on the doorstep just now with a handful of possible oddballs, looking at the sky. None of the yarns looked anything like the sky. I wonder if artists embarking on landscape have this problem – the sky doesn’t look anything like oil paint? The scarf, in greys and a bit of blue, is looking rather well.

You’re right, Kristie, that the skeins tangle around each other, compounding the problem of all the ends. And I’m sure you’re right, Tricia, that spit-splicing is the answer. I am using mostly Shetland jumper-weight yarns which are fuzzy and adhesive and should work splendidly. It would be good to be able to use half-a-width of colour, too – white for high-flying clouds, if 2012 ever gets that far. But I have never mastered spit-splicing. Perhaps that can be one of my challenges for the year. At the moment, I am just bashing ahead despite confusion which is how I deal with much of life.

Sleeveless sweater

I took the sleeveless sweater I’m meant to replace to the computer screen yesterday. “Bark”, as I thought, is the nearest madelinetosh colour to the original. Jimmy Bean doesn’t have any at the moment, but Webs does. But at bedtime my husband said that maybe he’d like something more like the just-finished sock, dark, perhaps purple.

Applying myself again to the madelinetosh colours this morning, I am fired with the idea of Georgia O’Keefe. Appropriate for an art historian. Her pictures are colourful but she worked in charcoal at the beginning and end of her career and that is presumably what the colour-name alludes to. Jimmy Bean has only six skeins. I think that would be enough but will try to do the actual measuring-and-calculating today.

It would be especially gratifying to use it since I have failed to interest him in Van Gogh or Hundertwasser as an inspiration for socks.