Can a blog be a phoenix?

I'm hoping this one can be.

I know there's been a long hiatus, which is mostly down to Knit Camp. All the work before it and all the fallout after it just made me feel that it was impossible to contribute anything, both here and elsewhere on 'tinterweb. Though the dust has settled somewhat, the whole thing has had a profound impact and I am only now feeling capable of crawling out from under my stone.

However, I never stopped knitting, though I don't suppose that will come as much of a surprise to anyone. Strangely, for one who at one time constantly protested that she didn't like knitting socks, I've been knitting mostly socks:



These are the Escher Socks from "Knitting Socks with Hand Painted Yarn". Yarn is Opal Trekking and I used the usual 2.5mm circular needle. Of course, I didn't follow the pattern much. I used the stitch pattern but made them toe-up (which I much prefer) using the worksheets for the shaped round toe and the hybrid heel from Chrissy Gardiner's "Toe-Up".

I don't normally buy patten books because I resent paying through the nose for the one pattern in the book I might possibly want to knit. However, both of the above books are well worth the outlay. Chrissy Gardiner's book doesn't have terribly exciting patterns (just my opinion and no offence intended) but the worksheets for different toe and heel treatments which allow you to make toe-up socks from any pattern are certainly worth the cover price. The hand painted yarn book has very interesting information about how to deal with the pooling and splotching that so often occurs with hand painted yarns as well as some lovely patterns. I have already made several of them with more in the pipeline.

Speaking of which:



these are Veronik Avery's Staccato Socks from that same book.

The pattern is toe-up and is designed to use one main yarn and small amounts of three additional colours. I used stuff from the sock yarn blanket bag, thinking that if all the yarn I've got goes into the sock yarn blanket it will be sufficient to cover the Great Bed of Ware (with quite a bit left to hang down the sides).

That's enough for now - the phoenix is feeling tired, but for those of you who might have been missing it,
here's the back field in a snowstorm:



More socks, amongst other things, soon.