Photos and Finished Objects

So, to follow on from a couple of posts ago... here are the promised photos.

	This is my grandmother's knitting basket, now stacked up with all my newest yarn purchases. The stuff I couldn't remember from yesterday was Rowan's Wool Cotton - that's the yummy balls of the muted blue and the gold at the front. I've got three skeins of each, and may try and do stripey socks or something. If anyone's got any suggestions, let me know.
Here is the basket from another angle, showing more of the yummy yarns, plus the needles that my mother had collected from antique shops etc.
	And here are the needles, a little bit closer up (sorry - I've not got photo editing software onto my new laptop yet, so I can't crop and resize and colour adjust like I want to yet). Note the built in crochet hook on the very bottom pair of needles. I think the top pair might be rosewood - they certainly have that warm grain about them. They're also all incredibly long, and I'm still not quite sure what to use them for. Sizes range from 8s to 11s.
This was my most recent yarn splurge. I was in Michaels yesterday shopping for goodies for my Secret Pal, and couldn't resist the colours in this yarn. It's 100% cotton, so I'll have to knit it fairly tight on small needles, because it'll want to stretch and relax. Yet again I prove to be a sucker for purple and teals.

And why the reason for all this fine yarn and talk of socks? Well ... after being inspired by a bunch of my fellow knit bloggers, I decided that socks would be the perfect thing to knit on an 8 hour airplane flight to England - small, less chance of elbowing my neighbour, and definitely a conversation starter. So the Friday before I flew out, I went to the wonderful City Knits and the pusher^H^H^H^H kind and helpful staff there sold me a multi-size pattern (5 sizes of sock from baby to mens, in worsted, sport and fingering weight yarns) and some size 6 needles, and the "cheap and dirty" wool I asked for, so that if I did mess up my very first pair of socks, it wasn't on the expensive, hand painted merino yarn.

So I cast on during the flight to London, knitted when I had a spare moment or two, and, with a final burst at Stitch'n'Bitch this past Monday, I hereby present ... my very first pair of socks!

Turquoise blue socks for Terry	The socks checking out our rather impressive crop of beefsteak tomatoes this morning

The yarn is Heritage Easy Care 8 - an 8 ply superwash wool. I didn't like it much: it's fairly heavy (somewhere between sport and worsted weight), and most annoyingly, kept untwisting as I wrapped it for each stitch, so I always had stitches that were splitting into 4 separate strands. Plus it's not as soft as I'd like socks to be. I'll see what happens after they're washed - and anyway, like I said, this was basically a practice pair. Still, I'm really pleased with how they came out, and now wish that I had used some more fun yarn that would make stripes or patterns or something.

Anyway I'm now hooked. A definite "darksider", as the GLB-knit list would have it. Expect more socks soon. They meet all my criteria for knitting: impressive looking, as easy or complex as you want them to be, and fast to finish.

The only downside to the trip is I think I left my notions bag on the plane. This was a really nice pencil case with a bunch of crochet hooks, stitch markers including hand made ones from Roxy and Julie, a tape measure, yarn needles and all the other little things that you need to hand while knitting. I've emailed British Airways, but I'm not holding out much hope. *sigh*. In the meantime, I've bought a new crochet hook and tapestry needle as the bare minimum to start with, and at least I can now weave in the ends on the socks.

I guess that's it. Long posts recently - but it makes up for the time I was away. I never know how to end these things either. Thanks for reading - and now I'm back to work.