Home Again, Home Again

Actually, I've been "home again" for quite a while now but what with the start of "Le Tour", the Olympic Torch coming right past the house and the incessant rain, there hasn't been much time/inclination for blogging.

I've been knitting, though.  Oh, Yes.

I finished the Good Day Sunshine Challenge:

Here, she is reclining in the garden in one of the rare moments that the rain is not tipping down.  Sadly, she remains unblocked.  I really don't know how I'm going to deal with the area around the neck - it just isn't the right shape and that's after I modified the pattern on my second start.  I feel slightly bad that I haven't quite finished this because the challenge was to do it within one month (i.e. by 14th July).  It was finished...

I've been chugging away on the Mona Lisa but there really isn't much to show - and I'm still waiting for the remainder of the yarn.

A while ago Nicky at my LYS gave me this:

delicious Botany Lace from Araucania in my perfect colours, but only with the proviso that I knit something for her from this:

Well, I don't want to give the game away completely (just in case she's reading) but I have made something.

A rather nice something, if you ask me (not that anyone did):

and (because it's not the same without a bit of lace, is it?):

I'm not showing the whole thing because I don't want to give the game away completely.

Babies seem to be springing up all over the place.

These are for the daughter of a friend of mine:

The yarn is  Schoppel-Wolle Zauberball colour Tropical Fish.  I bought this ages ago, so long ago that I can't remember where, and it's been waiting to tell me what it wants to be.  Finally, it spoke and told me it wanted to be Ann Budd's "Better than Bootees Baby Socks"

I followed the pattern on the first sock (which actually isn't shown here - there are going to be four socks in total) but the short-rows for the heel and toe were a right performance (never mind what Priscilla Gibbson-Roberts says).  So on the second and all subsequent socks I have used the plain and simple short rows that are deconstructed here.   I rarely use short rows for heels because they don't fit me (or 'im indoors for that matter), so I hadn't really got down to the (k)nitty gritty on them but the link above really does tell you all you need to know (and possibly more than some people would care to).

The pattern was first published in Interweave Knits, Summer 2005 which brings me on to my big whine of the day.  I have a subscription to IK from Newsstand (no link- I would not encourage anyone to have anything to do with them.)  Instead of sending me IK Spring 2012 they sent me Knitscene.  I remonstrated.  They said there had only been a crochet special.  Not True.  This morning a package dropped through the letter box.  Looks like Interweave?  Yes, but it's not - it's that b****y Knitscene.  Again!  I have sent a stiff email.  I await their response with interest.  In the meantime:  Newsstand.  Bargepole.  You have been warned.

Off to watch the Tour (where our boy, Bradley Wiggins, is poised for success - unless he manages to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, as the Brits so often do.)  I don't really mean that.  I just don't want to put the commentators' curse on it.  Go Bradley!