The Joy of DPNs

The Joy of DPNs is that when you are the original loose woman, and when all the stitches-in-waiting of your Hoffnung sock:



fall off the needle, and you make an instinctive lunge to catch them, it's just as easy to stab yourself in the hand as it is to stab yourself in the thigh:



I'm using some Cascade sock yarn in colour 5616, bought at UK Ravelry Day in Coventry from a vendor whose name I can't recall. I like the feel of this yarn but it's splitty (technical term) and looks as though it might pill at the first wearing. I can't say I'm terribly impressed.

The Hoffnung pattern, on the other hand, is a joy. We start in the middle of the top of the foot by casting on eight stitches. We then work a lace square and end up with 32 stitches on each side. A short-row toe is worked over the stitches of needle one (one side of the square) then the sole is knitted back and forth, joined to the waiting stitches on each side by K2tog/P2tog, until no stitches remain. Then you work a short-row heel and dash on up the leg (though actually, they are ankle socks, so there's not much of a leg.) The one sock is finished, the other is started.

While I was casting about to decide which socks to knit next, 'im indoors suggested I knit a size nine sock (just his size). I warned him that I wasn't in the market for knitting boring socks. Then came the search for a suitable (non-boring) pattern. Eventually, I found these and asked #1 son if he thought his daddy would wear them. Response? "I don't know, but I would." So that's two pairs of Jack Sparrow's required.

I seem to be on something of a sock knitting odyssey and I really don't know why. Socks are not my favourite things to knit but sometimes they just seem to hit the spot.

I finished the toe-up monkeys:



but while I love the yarn (thanks, MA in PA), I'm not so keen on the style of the socks. The gusset is not deep enough, so it's quite hard to get the socks on. Once they are on, they are fine, but I don't think I'll be using this particular construction in the future. However, I'm very impressed with this photograph, which is me taking a picture of my own feet:



I think I must have been a contortionist in a previous life.

Look what appeared in the back field:



It's all very green:



So is the garden:



That's a general over-view. Onions and shallots in the foreground; sweetcorn to the left. Runner beans, sprouts and cabbages in the right corner. Purple sprouting broccoli, curly kale, asparagus, leeks, parsnips, globe artichokes and Jerusalem artichokes in the far left bed.

Here's the salad patch:



Spinach, beetroot, radishes, mixed leaves, rocket, spring onions, lollo rosso.

Ann-at-someone-else's-work tipped up at my work the other day, bringing with her a little sparkly bag. "I saw this and I thought of you."



and this one:



Isn't she a sweetie?