Leaving on a jet plane…

Tags

aeroplane, Cologne, Noro, Regia, shawls, socks, Stitch 'n' Bitch, toe-up, trains

Not quite but soon! The top of my Ravelry queue reflects that too. 

First up Jeck. I’ve used this pattern before for Strrripes! which were also a travel project: Stripes – the love affair continues and for Making Merry. It’s mindless but not so mindless that you go crazy. Every second round has a little bit of activity with a few stitches to be slipped or purled. I’ll be starting at the toe (as usual) and working up so I’ll use Wendy Johnson’s Gusset Heel. I’ll be travelling on planes and trains for over 24 hours so that’s a lot of knitting time. You get a lot of knitting hours out of a ball of sock yarn!

Second in the queue is TGV. I have a ball of Noro Taiyo  for this.

Again this is very straightforward knitting; the first half is a garter crescent followed by a two-by-two ribbed frill. It will be perfect for when I visit my old Stitch ‘n’ Bitch group in Cologne as I’m sure there will be lots of chatting! After that? Probably more socks. This journey is the first of several…

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Stripes – the love affair continues

Tags

aeroplane, knitting, self-striping, socks, stripes, toe-up, train, yarn

I’ve commented before on the fact that I’m pretty taken with stripes. Well, A, one of my very good friends in Cologne, gave me two lovely balls of striping sock yarn and some patterns “for the plane”. I cast on the first toe on the train between Cologne and Frankfurt.

By the time I boarded my second flight in Bangkok the foot was well underway.

Since I’ve also been working on a cardigan, the socks were taken out and about in my bag but not worked on much at home. But now they are finished. This is Strrripes, my toe-up version of Regina Satta’s  Jeck design. There are columns of slipped stitches which stand out more when the socks are on feet:

I adore stripes but self-striping sock yarn can be worrisome. Do I make the socks match exactly? Do I simply start the second sock where the first one ends? Do I…?

Look closely and you’ll see that the orange stripes across the feet are aligned. This is perfect for  T-bar style, Mary Jane, shoes. Look more closely and you’ll see (if it hasn’t jumped out at you already) that the other stripes stop and start roughly in the same places but the colours don’t match. In my indecision over whether to go for perfectly identical socks or not, I chose the other option and knitted one sock from each end of the ball!

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Knitting in planes – Cologne to Sydney

Tags

aeroplane, DPNs, knitting, plane, socks, yarn

As I mentioned in a previous post I wasn’t too unhappy at the prospect of spending more than twenty hours in trains and planes in order to get from Cologne to visit Mr Soknitsome in Sydney. I knew I could use this time well to knit socks.

I did!

Green Apple Clouds

I finished these lacy green socks. Well…bar finishing off the ends. It’s all very well taking bamboo needles on a plane but I’m not too sure if two-inch darning needles are allowed so I left the sewing-in-the-ends for later.

On the second leg (Bangkok to Sydney) I found myself sitting next to a lovely lady from Adelaide. Laura still sounded British despite having spent a couple of decades in Australia and was kind enough to give me her contact details should I need them. It went further than that: once she saw me knitting socks she pulled out some wool from her carry-on and gave it to me, saying that she’s been clearing out at home but that she didn’t really knit anymore. I was quite overwhelmed and I’m sure I didn’t thank her enough.

Regia Kaffe Fassett Design Line

Sweet Tomato Heel

Knitting on a plane

Tags

aeroplane, cardigan, DPNs, knitting, plane, socks

A year ago Younger Soknitsome Daughter spent 6 months commuting from Cologne to Frankfurt Airport for an internship. There’s a high-speed train so the journey takes 50 minutes station-to-station. When I told my best knitting buddy about the commute her comment mirrored my first thought – Think of all that knitting time! (said with pronounced longing!).

This week I am spending the best part of a day in aeroplanes. I’m really happy about this as I get to see Mr Soknitsome after 7 weeks and 3 days. And I have 2 flights of ten hours in which I can eat, catch up on films, read and knit to my heart’s content.

So my Kindle is full and I’ve already figured out what projects I’ll be working on en route: socks! Why? Because

1. They are easy to get through airport security if you use bamboo DPNs.
2. They are easy to carry around anyway, and I will be out and about by myself during the week.
3. I have to get 2 pairs finished for presents before the end of October so I may as well get started on them now.

Mr Soknitsome will be busy at work and a little part of me wonders whether I might actually have more time to knit than wool so I’m considering whether I should not just squeeze in the beginnings of a cardigan too…I wouldn’t like to be sitting there with nothing to do 😉

WIP Wednesday – getting back on track

Tags

aeroplane, bus, KAL, Knitalong, knitting, socks, Socks with Sarah, train, WIP, WIP Wednesday

At the beginning of the year I decided to join in with a very relaxed knitalong: KnittingSarah‘s KAL, “Socks with Sarah, a KAL for 2014“. Knit a bit of a sock every day for a year. Sounds easy? Yes. I could work on other projects at the same time so I always had something simple for chatty social knitting as well as a more challenging project on my needles.

Socks make wonderful projects when you’re traveling. Whether you’re crossing oceans by plane, the country by train or just the city by bus, knitting socks works well in a small space.

Because they are such portable projects I keep the sock and the wool in a little pouch ready to pack into other bags for travel. So of course at home this sock is not waving at me, nor jumping around begging to be knitted. It’s sitting there quietly waiting to go on a journey. Out of sight, out of mind? Kind of. We’re halfway through the year already and I’m determined to finish it as I began: knitting a bit of a sock every day.

WIP Wednesday – reining in the ambition

Tags

aeroplane, learning, mistake, patterns, socks, WIP, WIP Wednesday, yarn

I’m about to do the planes-trains-and-automobiles thing for the second time in under a fortnight.  I was over-ambitious last time, thinking a half-knit sock would not suffice and decided I should cast on a new one. The sorry result was a pattern fiasco experiment that left me back where I’d started (see previous post). I’ve learnt my lesson. This time I’m quite content to finish my stripey ribbed sock and then, should there still be time on my hands, begin again (attempt number five) with the black sock yarn… Wish me luck!

WIP Wednesday – two steps forward and one step back

Tags

aeroplane, attempt, frogging, knitting, learning, patterns, progress, Ravelry, socks, texture, WIP, WIP Wednesday

I was away over the weekend. It was literally a flying visit. Taking the second sock of this pair (which has admittedly grown since the toe appearing here) didn’t seem like a good idea. I might get it finished and run out of knitting! Hardly likely but, of course, that would be when a flight gets delayed! I’d also have to take the first sock so I’d know exactly when to start the ribbing and when to cast off.

Starting a new pair sounded like a much better idea! So I did. I got the toe knitted up before we left and was ready to get cracking with some texture. I chose  Kebnekaise, having had it in mind when I bought the sock wool. Unfortunately, my colour splashes are much shorter and it just didn’t look right. I carried on for a bit, just to be sure, and then a good two inches into the foot, I frogged.

Attempt number two: Estonian Button Stitch Socks – from memory. Well my memory did not serve me well and the sock looked awful. The “buttons” pulled the stitches together and made gaps either side. So the sock was frogged back to the toe. Again.

Attempt number three: Hermione’s Everyday Socks. You can’t go wrong there, I thought. After all there are 5887 pairs of them on Ravelry. So off I went, knitting plain rows in-between the patterned rows until I had about two inches of foot. Again. Was I happy? No. The fabric felt very dense and I tried blaming it on the sock yarn even though it was quite normal otherwise. Something wasn’t right. In desperation I frogged. Again.

Attempt number four? Yes, there was a fourth attempt. I was in an aeroplane after all. I started anew with the same knit 3, purl 1 ribbing I’m doing on the sock I didn’t want to take with me! It works but I’m really not keen to knit the same pattern all over again right now.

So what did I learn? The patterned rows on Hermione are one purl for every three knit stitches and not one purl for every knit stitch. Estonian Button Stitch is quite different to what I was attempting to do and, done properly, I think this would match the yarn quite nicely.