Done so something new or two

Toad is finished, yesterday, amidst sunny warm and balmy weather - yes finished a long sleeved sturdy warm hand spun hand knit jersey with lined collar and cuffs for double warmth on the day we finally get summer. Just as well we live in Dunedin, for today we are back to colder days, with rain and overcast and not a lot of sunshine to warm us up. With any project ending - comes the time to start a new project (or two) - so I've done that and now have two socks on the needles, different ones.

So - twelve year old sons are not good at standing still, they dance, they jigger, they move - and on an overcast day for a while it looked like this was the best photo of Tobe wearing Toad that I would be able to show you. For interest sake, I used up every single gram and part gram of the Sock yarn I was using to line the collar and cuffs, ending with about 20cm left - so this was an excellent stash buster. I have a skein of the Blue left, which might become a hat, sometime. And I have to remind myself this is my first finished hand knit sweater .......something I am keen to do again even if it means spinning fibre in larger than 100g batches.

Front on, Toad gives Tobe Shoulders, well he has shoulders of his own but they are lean, lanky, skinny boy shoulders.I think all saddle shoulder designs do that to some degree - add in a linear and boxy shape at the shoulder. Having said that I think it will soften with wear, and use .... next winter if it still fits.

Side on gives some idea of Tobe's dimensions, front to back he is a proverbial bean pole .... over all I'm quite pleased with how it Toad (and Tobe) turned out.

The new project is a secret Christmas present, knitted toe up to keep the design kind of hidden for now. I am making Tardis socks. So far reverse engineering the pattern has been fine, cast on  two lots of 8 stitches using Judy's magic cast on, honestly the best seamless toe cast on ever IMO, increase at either end of each side for the next five rounds, then every second round until there are 34 stitches. Condensing the increases in the first few rounds gives a more rounded toe which I like.

There might be a second new project as well, for some reason I felt the need to cast on a washcloth this morning, worked in 2x2 rib with smocked details - sorry no photo yet but there will be next time.

Take care
Stella