Look! Look!

My nephew's stocking has been started, and finished.

This is one of those days when I'm so glad I have this blog, otherwise I'd be wandering around the village accosting strangers (or, worse, non-knitting acquaintances) with my knitting, waving it in their faces and saying "Look what I've done!! no, no, look!!!"

I have had so much fun with the binge-knitting this weekend...

It's been a very quiet weekend, which was fine; I was meant to have a dinner guest last night, who had to cancel earlier in the week, but the Knitting Obsession had possessed me by then, and there'd probably have been nothing started and I'd have been sitting in a big pile of yarn and books come 7pm and it would all have been a bit embarrassing...

So this was the view on Friday afternoon/evening when I got back from meeting Rosie... Books include Alice Starmore's Fair Isle Knitting, Nancy Bush's Folk Socks, and Jan Eaton's Cross Stitch Motif Bible. I started off using a pencil and a printed-out Excel spreadsheet, but in the end took it over to the PC and blocked things in there - much easier apart from the lettering...

Then I started with a Latvian Braid. I actually managed the two-colour long-tail cast on this requires; but after I'd finished the braid, I realised that wasn't what I wanted and ripped it back. Repeatedly. In the end, I worked out what I actually wanted to do, and went to bed to sleep on it, and by the time I left for Tesco the next morning, I had a provisional crochet cast-on and braid.

By about lunchtime, I had three braids, one pattern and the lettering...

And then I knitted some more, pausing to blog briefly and change CDs occasionally (Jeffery Deaver's The Empty Chair - I'm working through the Lincoln Rhyme audiobooks in order) until about 8pm when I ran out of chart. Stopped to cook a bit of dinner, add some more rows to the spreadsheet/chart and then settled down to knit some more... and it was just-another-row or just-another-CD until .... erm ... 2:20am. How did that happen? (Actually, that happens to me quite often with colourwork, particularly colourwork which is growing quickly...)

Needless to say, it was a slow start this morning, but while listening to The Archers Omnibus and the rather wonderful Desert Island Discs this morning (it was Julia Donaldson, who wrote The Gruffalo among other things; I haven't read it, or any of her others, but she was funny, and warm, and moving, and picked some lovely stuff), I danced along the foot and finished the toe; and to the accompaniment of the first CD of Dorothy L Sayers's Strong Poison, in the Ian Carmichael reading (of course), I picked up the cast-on, did an attached I-Cord edging and sewed in the ends.

And it is done!!

Things I like:

• It's festive and garish and still looks traditional
• It's the size intended (hanging up like that, it measures 65 cm (26") from the top of the hanging loop to the toe)
• The heel is exactly right for a stocking that's designed to hang up (the heel and toe both come from the Mamluke pattern from "Folk Socks"); I was hoping this was the case, but it actually is...
• My swatch came out at 18sts/10cm, which meant casting on 72 sts - which meant I had a huge choice of Fair Isle patterns at my disposal - and then when I reached the heel I discovered that the Mamluke pattern is worked over 72 sts as well so it was a no-brainer...
• It's a proper sock - most of the ones I've seen weren't really in proportion
• After the Latvian braids, I had no ripping back, at all - very unusual for something I've worked out myself
• It was the most satisfying bit of knitting I've done for a long time. I worked on a bit of a scarf a couple of weeks ago which had the same enjoying-the-moment appeal; but this was wonderful - there was nothing at all I'd rather be doing on earth than using this lovely yarn (Cascade 220) and making this great big sock. It's been a busy week after a busy weekend, and having a three-day weekend was just what was required.
• I left long floats rather than knitting them in (other than for the lettering) and that worked very well - it's unblocked in the photos but I think a quick hover with the steam iron will probably sort it out without the need for blocking.

And now, the obligatory reverse-of-the-work shot...

Not too shabby, if I say so as shouldn't...

I've written up some brief instructions and the chart - I need to sanity-check it (possibly by knitting another one for myself without the lettering but with a different chart on it) and will then try and work out how to upload the PDFs somewhere!

And now I need to start all those other little things you do over the weekend... To be fair, I took stretching breaks (generally when I put a new CD in) to do bits of washing, ironing, washing-up etc. so it's not actually unhygienic; and I do have food in; but I could do with giving everything a bit, no make that a lot, of a tidy-up. Time for some more Peter Wimsey, I think!