Mother Nature had a treat for me this morning. I know it will melt away soon but more than any other happening in the nature, this has warm wool written all over it. As the world still has some warmth from the summer hidden in its pockets, this new cold is sort of mellow, not the hard, biting cold yet. I know that the dark months are long, but I will try to look at the good sides and one is definitely that blue, all different hues of it, is present and what would be better than wrapping oneself in blue (and white)?
Thus
the Wallflower socks by Stephanie van der Linden. While I am knitting these, enjoying the clever heal and the way the pattern carries on towards the instep, I am thinking to myself if there can be more beautiful socks anywhere ever. Even though I have done the first, I did not have any trouble casting on for the second sock because I get to knit that beauty all over again. (I am not good at color-knitting, so the uneven stitches bother me a lot, but hopefully the handwriting (-knitting) will get better.)
I recently bought two sock knitting books: Think Outside the Sox and Around the World in Knitted Socks. I really like both of these books a lot and am happy that I bought these. I have to buy most of my books online and while often I am pleased with what I get, at times I end up with a book that I am not so happy with.
Think Outside the Sox has many, many innovative ways to knit socks. There is plenty to knit but the book will provide lots of inspiration that will probably carry ones imagination outside the socks, and if few of the techniques are quite fiddly, I think they are worth examining a bit. I can see myself spending hours just looking through the book over and over and soon it will be filled with post-it notes of things that come to my mind. I highly encourage you to pick up the book and flip through it the next time you come across it.
The other one I bought is by Stephanie van der Linden. It has more traditional designs in it, but all beautiful as they are and these designs will bring hours of interesting knitting time for the coming dark months when the north winds shakes the house, the temperature drops too far down and the fires need to be kept going to keep the house warm.
Right this moment, the sun has climbed up and amongst the blue, the tree trunks are glowing brown. This picture is through the window... (The little one has finally calmed down and I don't want to wake her by getting up going out to take pictures, not just yet...)
Wool with you,
Lene
