I have been overwhelmed by Mysterons. I had dyed up a dozen skeins, and whoosh, they were gone. I have dyed more this morning and they are drying as fast as I can make them dry. Since they have all been bought as partners for more exotic edging type yarns, there is no point in sending out part-orders. I will get the Mysteron-plus parcels to you as soon as I possibly can. Most of the orders are now in the post, so just bear with me ... and in the meantime look out for those spooky circle things which slide along the floor towards you.
Sock knitting continues.
I have decided that although I can actually do the Knit-two-socks-at-the-same-time thing, technically, I mean - I'm not sure that I actually enjoy it. I think it's because I find it less portable. My knitting is mostly done in front of the TV, while "watching" Captain Scarlet and the like, or when I'm on the Jazz Orchestra run on Tuesday evenings which gives me an hour of Hot Chocolate drinking in the nearby pub/restaurant.
I found that although I understand the principle, and I didn't commit the usual faux pas of knitting right across the stitches of both socks with a single length of yarn, it just feels cumbersome. So much so that I found myself not knitting in preference to getting it out and doing a few rows, so it was actually slower rather than faster.
This is Sock-the-first, almost down to the toes. I'm not magic looping, the circ is just for safe storage in my sock bag. As you can see the bitter chocolate won the day, and as I only had a 50g skein on the shelf, I divided the 50g into two and each sock has been allocated roughly 25g for the foot. These are for Fegrig so the rib is 60 rows of 2x2, which has used about 12g from each of the 50g balls of variegated yarn. The sock is 72 sts on 2.5mm needles. I usually use 2.75mm, but he will wear these with his browny'-grey suit so I wanted a smoother sock for "good" shoes. The foot is knitted roughly as far as the ball of the foot at the moment and I have paused with not a lot of yarn left on the ball...
... in order to knit the foot of Sock-the-second.
Although the Two on Two Circs thing hasn't really done it for me, I am definitely a convert to dividing the yarn into two balls and knitting two socks at once, just not on circs.
Two ribs, two heels, two gussets, two feet. I'm going to take these sock-feet down to the ends of the Bitter Chocolate yarn, or at least until the row count matches, and then if I am short of yarn I'll do the toes in Fegrig.
As an experiment it is interesting. Fegrig has size ten, 72 stitch feet so I don't expect to get all the way to the toes without needing to be creative with the yarn, but if these had been socks for me, the 50g of solid for the feet would have been plenty for my size 6, 64 stitchers. Now that there are 50g skeins in the shop, this has the potential to more or less wipe out any leftovers. And at a stroke the "problem" of the pattern being disrupted over the gusset area (stop smirking) has been dealt with.
I will let you know what the actual stats are at the end.
Occasionally, in the blogosphere, you stumble upon a new blog which is just stunning and you have to tell the world about it. Last week I found a new one.
Nominally it's a crochet blog, but there are few photos (and no knitting at all).
The writer lives in New York.
So what do we have in common?
Well there are Bento boxes.
We have several here in the kitchen cupboard from which to choose.
This one belongs to my younger son who is 16 and who looks rather sheep like when his hair grows longer than an inch or two. He chose it. Nothing like self depreciation, is there?
It just has two compartments, the main one for the rice and the lidded one for everything else.
This is mine. Again, the base for the rice, but this one has a divided compartment for the upper layer.
It also sports the words "Around the year when we would like to stand on tiptoe".
No, I have no idea either.
It was bought in Japan and many of the bento boxes had similarly unusual wording. I love it.
As well as a collection of bento boxes, we also have the essential closure devices.
The small one is for a chopstick box. I did have a splendid photo of the family chopstick collection too but it seems to have not registered on the camera so I'll take a fresh one another day.
And then there are the books.
No I don't speak Japanese, far less read it or write it, so this really is cooking by pictures.
These bowls will probably all be about seven or eight cm wide. Exquisite.
And what does all this have to do with the blog of a New York crocheter called Widdershins? Well, she too is a bento user.
She is also clever, humble, erudite and thought provoking. She writes of the pain and sadness of loss, and of the unexpected joy of finding.
And tucked away in her side-bar she has the FreeRice link. My score is stuck in the forties, but I donated 1320 grains of rice this morning.
How about you?
n