The knit edition

This seems like the ideal moment to talk about some of the knitting I've been doing recently; it has, after all, been taking up most of my free time. For a start, I've just finished the emerald green jacket I've been on with since about the end of October. It is another of these, because I just love the pattern so much. (In fact, I have another two planned, in dark grey and gold; but I'm not in any hurry to knit those. They'll do for next winter, if I'm still here.) I forced myself to quite a tight and rigid schedule for that, because I wanted to get it finished while there was still a reasonable amount of cold weather to wear it in. Besides, I've been rather struggling for layers of that kind of weight. I had the red one, plus a burgundy aran jumper I knitted a few years back; I did also have an oatmeal aran jumper in a tweedy kind of yarn (I think it was the WI aran from Hobbycraft), which I really loved, but I wore it so much that it started going at the cuffs. I have no idea why I'm so heavy on my cuffs, but I am. Anyway, now I also have this lovely emerald green jacket with a gold filament running through it, which immediately takes a great deal of pressure off my winter wardrobe. I'm hoping to get a picture soon, but in the meantime, just imagine the red one translated into a bright green and you'll have the basic idea.

Then there's my mother's hat, pictured above. Again, you've seen incarnations of this hat before, but I am particularly delighted that I've finally been able to knit one for my ancient mother. I've had to wait till she reached 86 before she'd let me knit her anything. Fortunately I am extremely patient! I'm not entirely sure what all that was about, but I do know that when I was a child she flatly refused to teach me to knit, and now I'm a much better knitter than she ever was; so I'm not sure if there's some kind of guilt going on there, or just difficulty in accepting that I'm as good a knitter as I am, or... oh, who knows? That's probably one for my counsellor to untangle. But, anyway, whatever was going on, once she had the hat in her hands she was absolutely delighted with it, and I'm very glad it is currently keeping her ears warm in the cold weather we're having at the moment. (It's not as if she has much hair for the warming of ears. She's gone very thin on top in her old age.)

Right at the other end of the age spectrum, we have the baby jumpers (plus, of course, the ongoing charity hats, but you've seen so many of those that I don't need to talk much about them). This is quite a thing at the moment. I think I've already told you that The Artist was supposed to be due on the 30th but she hasn't had it yet (still hasn't, at time of writing); however, apparently she's probably not as overdue as it appears, because her original due date was given as the 5th, but they brought it forward after one of her scans due to the baby's measurements at that time. So it's quite likely that she really was due on the 5th. The other lady who was due yesterday had her baby on the 30th, and it was a boy, so, as is somewhat traditional in our church, the poor child got an obscure Old Testament name. (This time it wasn't too bad, but he's still going to grow up having everyone ask him if he's Jewish.) So I've made a yellow jumper for The Artist's baby, and Old Testament Name is getting a red one, which is still in progress. However, it turns out that the lady who translates for our Ukrainian refugees is now due in February, and the lady who relieved me of the Bumless Wonder (remember the Bumless Wonder?) is having her second one at the end of April. Colours for these two are yet to be decided. However, I usually make winter jumpers, so babies born any time from April onwards generally get to wait a few months and then I'll knit them the 6-12 months size, rather than the 0-6 months, so they get decent wear out of it. So I asked the lady who's due in April if she wanted me to do that, or whether she'd rather have a cotton one straight away in the first size; and she chose the latter. This is fine by me, and it's also a little unusual. I don't think I've done a cotton one for a church baby before.

I will just say one thing about the baby hats. I am making a dark grey one at the moment, so I thought I'd use the black metallic filament with it. That looks very classy, but it turned out to be such a nightmare to use that I cut it off once I'd finished the welt. It's wound in a peculiar way, so every time you try to unwind a length it pulls off a whole load more of the thread with it, which has already led to quite a lot of wastage due to having had to cut out tangles. When I get a quiet moment I'm going to see if I can sort that out, but it may mean winding shorter lengths onto spools or bobbins, which isn't ideal.

Oh yes, and the other day I made a passing reference to vegan sock yarn. My sister is the big sock-knitter in our family (in fact, I've asked her to do a guest post at some point, but I'm not sure when she's going to be able to do that, since she's currently up to her ears with church music and typesetting). I haven't done it very much in the past because I have quite a limited amount of use for cotton socks. The period between "I need winter socks" and "I don't want to be wearing socks at all" is quite short. So if I knit socks, I want winter ones, and winter sock yarns are generally wool and nylon. Thankfully I've recently discovered a site called simply Vegan Yarn, and they do sock packs like these; they will wind them into cakes for you free of charge (which is a sine qua non for me, since I hate dealing with skeins), and they also do custom dyeing. So, at some point, socks will be knitted, but it may not be very soon. I have enough socks for now, and I have weaving and netting queued up ahead of the socks.

I must admit I would like to make one of these pairs of socks for d'Artagnan. Well, it's his legs, you see. He is, as I think I've previously mentioned, an enthusiastic long-distance cyclist (by which I mean he will quite cheerfully cycle the breadth of southern England to sing in a music festival, and then back again); and he is a small man. In particular, he has short legs. So he has exceedingly well-developed calf muscles and not enough room for them vertically... plus he's inclined to stuff his trousers into his socks when he's cycling... anyway, now you can see why he could really do with some specially designed socks with wide tops. I should have remembered to measure him up for those at the concert in October. Ah well, hopefully I'll get to another concert this year!