Socks, Sun and Shawls

Hello everyone, I hope you're enjoying this lovely spell of warm weather we are having here in the UK.  Makes a nice change.

I've been enjoying knitting up my socks for May.  I used West Yorkshire Spinners Yarn in the Goldfinch colourway and they just flew off the needles.

I just love the colours.  These could be my favourite socks of all time.

I had planned that this month I would try knitting my socks two at a time (I like to try something new each month).  I knit these socks toe up - this is now firmly established as my favourite way to knit socks.  I got as far as part way up the foot, knitting two at a time, before I lost patience and gave up.

I found it was taking me longer to do a round for two at a time than it did for me to knit a round individually on both socks.  I tend to knit my socks simultaneously, so I don't have a problem with second sock syndrome, which seems to be the only reason to knit two at a time.  So at least I gave it a try, in the end, it's all about finding the right sock recipe for me.

You can see full details of this sock project on my Ravelry page, HERE.

As the weather has been so nice, we had an afternoon watching a cricket match.  We watched the last day of the three day match between Lancashire 2nd XI and Derbyshire 2nd XI at Northern Cricket Ground (a lovely small ground with about twenty spectators!)

It's very relaxing, sitting in the Sun and getting on with some knitting!  I worked on my navy cardigan, just to try and make some progress.

It may be sunny but I'm not taking my cardigan off yet!

I'm aiming to have this finished this month, but...

...there's always a but , and it usually means a distraction.  So this week's distraction is a lovely shawl pattern by Helen Stewart called Spindrift.

I received a gorgeous ball of gradient yarn from Grace for Christmas, and I've been agonising ever since over which pattern to use for this special yarn.

So this week I finally decided to go for the Spindrift pattern.  The main reason I chose this one was that I wanted to be able to use the whole ball of yarn.  With some patterns I wasn't sure if I would end up with yarn leftover or actually run out.  With the Spindrift pattern, percentages are given throughout as to how much yarn you have used.  So far I have knit 20% of the pattern and this ties in exactly with the amount of yarn I have used, so I feel very happy.

I can't wait to see how the colour changes progress.  At the moment it's essentially stocking stitch.  Here's how much I did on the first evening of working on it.

It's very addictive.  At 50% the pattern changes to eyelets.

I hope to have this finished over the weekend - but if this lovely weather continues, we might have some days out, which might slow me down a bit.

Then, hopefully it will be back to the cardigan and the other neglected shawl.  With that, I'll say bye for now, and get back to my lovely Spindrift shawl.  Happy days everyone.