just a little bit more ...

is how my Taimi socks are making me feel, I've really only knit on them in two sessions, and the odd little round here and there. You know waiting for the kettle to boil for tea with breakfast, a few rounds after the morning tidy up, lunches, dishes .. school bags packed and waiting until its time to go. Those of you without kids might not know that you can only drop your littlies off after 8:30, so that sets the leaving home time in the morning. When it was just me, I'd walk the 30-40 minutes into town, or bus in at 7:30 and get a whole lot done before the rest of the workforce arrived. But not any more .. now its 8:15 leave the house, and 8:45 arrive at work. Still I get secret hugs and kisses palmed off on me as they hop out of the car .. its so worth it. But back to the socks, there are the extra few rounds with a cuppa when I get home, some while dinner cooks, and again a few rounds at home after spin night .. again whilst the kettle boils for a wee cuppa tea. All those extra rounds here and there add up to speedy progress.

Taimi has grown, lots, two socks up to the heel already. The pretty little leaf detail has started .. and kind of caught me out a little. I had imagined that the gusset was hidden in the closed lacework but no, its in the usual place, along each side of the sole. There may be a special name for the closed lace work ... if there is tell me. This is described as a 'fairly common lace pattern, but the yarn overs are twisted closed' making it less open and more graphic, which is why I'm calling it closed lace work.

I'm still working them two at a time, but right now its one heel shaping at a time, heels have short rows and that means one at a time. Taimi has a lace motif that starts a little way up the heel and then runs into the lacework around the instep and leg. That means I've got to be super accurate .. or it wont' line up and I'll have to fudge it. With knitting a few rounds here and there .. I have lost count once or twice of just which round I'm on. Right now I've frogged the start of the heel flap back to the heel cup shaping and I'm going to tick the rounds off as I knit them .. just to be sure of where I am and what I've done. Because of the lace work Taimi has a plain heel, something I didn't realise until just now, I'd sort of been thinking how nice it would be to knit this yarn in an eye of partridge heel flap, looking forward to it, but that won't work with the lace pattern, so I will shelve that wish until I knit the next sock.


Short post today ...
There is another blanket square on the way, and I've still not found the 3 I left on the Show-n-tell table at the last guild meeting - some one must have picked them up. Once found that makes four squares, well three and seven eigths really. This one is a made up log cabin variation, still in garter stitch, and all one colour. There is a lot more yarn in here to knit, but squares are not the most fun in the world .. socks and shaped sweaters and mittens and other things are .. still its for a good cause, and they are good for when I'm likely to be distracted, and they use up left overs in stash.

Na Stella