Monkey Socks Finished

Here are a couple of photos of my finished Monkey Socks. I don't have a garden so I can't take nice outdoor photos, so I asked my bestfriend to take my Monkey socks home with her yesterday lunchtime and take some photos for me that I could use on my blog. My bestfriend is not a knitter but I do get her to check out my sock progress and bore her silly talking about socks and yarn. Hey what are bestfriends for !!! I know the photos show the yarn as a more bluey colour but the actual colour is different shades of greeen/turquoise/silver/grey. The yarn I used was bought from A Piece of Beauty online shop which I think is closed at the moment but will soon be opening again with a new improved website and more yarn. I can't wait to see what colours Kirsty comes up with. Ooh, nearly forgot to mention that this is a very well written and easy pattern to follow and a joy to knit.

Pattern: Monkey Socks by Cookie A for Knitty
Yarn: A Piece of Beauty Sock Yarn

Colour: Granite Falls
Needles: 2.5mm Clover Bamboo DPNs

Washing Disaster

I had a big pile of handknit socks that needed washing and I thought to save time I would wash the machine washable ones in the washing machine. Wish I hadn't bothered now as when I fished them out of the washing machine one of my recently knitted socks had a hole in it. See the piccie below. It obviously caught on something else in the wash and broke the yarn! It's nothing too disastrous. I can darn it closed, hopefully not to messily as I'm not the best sewer. I don't think I'll bother to wash anymore socks in the machine. I'll stick to hand washing them in future.

I've Started My Monkeys

I thought it was about time I posted a photo of my current work in progress. I've been working on my latest socks and I'm knitting the Monkey pattern from Knitty.

I know I'm probably the last person in knitting blogland to be knitting this pattern and I've wanted to knit it for a while but I had other socks to knit. It's a very easy pattern to knit and I'm really enjoying it. I bought the yarn from A Piece of Beauty online shop and I really like the colours.

Alpacas and Friends

We went to Lulworth Castle for an Easter Egg hunt over the Easter hols and they had some lovely Alpacas and other animals there. So I thought I would post a few photos (just because Alpacas are so cute!).

Alpacas at Lulworth Castle

More cute Aplacas at Lulworth Castle!

This is a lovely Angora mix (I think) Sheep that was at the Animal Farm on the Lulworth Estate. He was very sleepy but decided to come out and have a look at us as we had some animal food. He also had a very regal walk.
Mr. Peacock strutting his stuff!

I took my neice to Putlake Adventure Farm on Bank Holiday Monday and we saw lots of lovely animals including this very proud Peacock! My 4yr old neice got to feed the baby goats and sheep and have a pony ride but she was much more interested in the bouncy castle, trampolines and huge climbing frame and ball park!
I got to see more Alpacas at Putlake. All of them had been trimmed and we had several cups of Alpaca food to feed to them which they seemed to enjoy very much.

Lupine Lace Socks Finished

Pattern: Lupine Lace by Evelyn A Clark for Fiber Trends

Yarn: Posh Yarn's Lucia Sock Yarn
Colour: Raspberry

Needles: 2.25mm Susan Bates DPNs

I finally finished my Lupine Lace socks!! Yay!! This pattern was designed by Evelyn A Clark and I have to say I do love her patterns as they are so well written! They took longer than normal to finish as I have been trying to knit the Cate cardi as well. I've also had less time to knit as I've been playing on my new Nintendo Wii. I did manage to knit a bit over the bank holiday weekend but I have to say I played a lot of tennis, baseball and bowling (on the Wii) and even got a Wii injury whilst playing tennis when my friend whacked my in the arm with her remote controller!! All good fun though ! Oh and one of the games I played you had to race on knitted cows!

I've been looking at various blogs recently and seen some lovely socks being knitted and getting lots of inspiration. A couple of great blogs to check out are Tienne Knits and Pat's Knitting and Quilting. Just check out their socks!!!! I've got several patterns lined up to knit and I've just cast on for the Monkey socks.

More Sock Yarn

I've been trying to be very good lately and not order any new yarn and knit socks with yarn I've already got in my stash but then I received an email from n at The Yarn Yard letting me know that there were some new colours available on her website. Well I missed a lot of the new colours as they were snapped up very quickly but when I saw this colour I couldn't resist adding it to my shopping basket!! The colour is Spring Breeze and it's green and purple and lilac. I'm wondering if I should use it to knit the Pomatomus socks I've been thinking of knitting....

Colinette Cate Cardi WIP

I haven't posted in a while but I have been knitting, honest ! I'm still working on my Lupine Lace socks but they've taken a back seat to Cate. This photo shows the completed left and right front of my Cate Cardi. I've now finished the back and I've got to cast on my first sleeve. I'm using 8mm needles which do seem very strange and cumbersome compared to my normal 2.5mm sock needles. The yarn is Colinette Giotto which I've never knitted with before. I'm guessing you would call it a ribbon yarn? Hopefully it won't take me too long to knit the sleeves and then I can get back to more sock knitting.