Look Snowflake!

Here in the south of the country we are in the midst of winter, so cold clear days, and 'crisp' mornings. Now 'crisp' is a local term that secretly means bitterly cold, ice and wind straight from the sea that can chill you thru the thickest of hats and gloves. At my house it has been snowing, well not really, as I have just the one snow flake - and a very pretty one. The yarn bombing on my gate has been added to, and I've been updated - this was a birthday gift with lace provided by several people!
As well as the sock today I have a new sock project to introduce and a new sock yarn....together with its pattern.

With a sock off the needles, and nothing in the way of easily portable knitting on the needles I thought it prudent to start something that was portable. Well that was the plan, Bear was next in line for socks so I provided several sock books and left him to choose. Bear choose a plain sock, plain toe, plain foot, plain heel, and 2x2 ribbed leg .... which was perfect, exactly the sort of sock project that I needed. Simple enough to be portable and mindless when I was out or distracted by life.


Except I didn't want to knit that sock. I didn't know that at first, I found a skein of Bears Bunker and converted it from Skein to cake, two cakes each of 50g. made sure it was sock yarn (superwash not vintage sock). About then I was catching up on my blog-roll and I saw the Yarn Harlot post images of exactly the sock I wanted to knit - something with texture and pattern and a challenge and yet something that wouldn't scare a Bear by being too girly or frilly or pretty. The sock is Revival and I'm being very literal in my inspiration, as I'm also working mine in grey. Bear approves - provisionally with a hesitant comment 'its not to much work is it?' Non-knitters just don't get it, sometimes simple and easy isn't enough.

Of course there is a reason I should be working a plain simple sock .... because I'm only a little way into the leg chart and already I'm frogging. The pattern is all twisted traveling stitches and baby cables - easy enough and doubly easy with pointy knitting pins. But ... I managed to mirror the pattern at the wrong point ... so ended up with a bit of a muddle ...... no problem, as I'm frogging down and knitting back up. I have already fixed one section this way .. and this will be done soon. Now that the direction of the chevrons are set the sock should be plain sailing.

This week was the second installment of the Vintage Purls winter sock club 2011 - so surprise yarn. I love this, every month during sock club - a neat wee parcel of yarn and pattern and other wee treats arrives for me to play with and stash. This is Hocken, same name for the pattern and the yarn. Hocken is a traditional name in Dunedin, streets, city fathers and libraries all carrying the name Hocken. The wee extra treat this time is a canvas bag with a sweet bird knitting graphic. This will get lots of use. The sock heel looks particularly interesting, perhaps if I had not already cast on for Revival I might have started this.

Things are quiet and busy, the first week back teaching in a new term so things are never quite where I left them. Friday I'll be teaching kids to knit at the settlers museum ... so if you are in Dunedin Friday from 10-12 - call in and say hi!

na Stella

And now I really need to say Thank-you

because I have many things to thank people for, many, many things. And this is where it gets tricky as I really can't put my thank you's in order, each is as significant as any other, and so I'm just going to introduce things in the order of their arrival. And then after I have a little bit of progress on my knitting to report and the final installment in the Vintage Purls sock-yarn club joined my stash, and lastly a pencil joke - one that has Bear and I giggling but one that the cubs puzzeled by the things that amuse adults. But first thank yous ...


A little over a week ago this wonderful book arrived at my doorstep, Fashioning Fashion - European dress in detail 1700 to 1915. This book goes-with an exhibition that was on at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, finishing only a few weeks ago. A friend had alerted me to the exhibition .. but of course LA is just a tad far to travel at short notice, so I suggested I treat both of us the book if there was one. Turns out there was .. but instead I was the one who was treated the book. I am really lucky .. this is an amazing book, and is a heavy hardback book so it was quite a gift. Sitting on the title page is a wee tiny 90mm long mechanical pencil that Bear found this week and gifted to me. It was amongst his family things, and so could have been his mothers or her mothers. The pencil takes a 1.1mm lead, which is still available, and has the most gorgeous tassel. I have no idea what this was for, I suspected it was a Bridge pencil but it seems they came in sets of four (clubs, hearts, diamonds, and spades), and it seems unlikely to be a golf pencil with a tassel like that although some sources say that small mechanical pencils were for golf. I wonder if it was a dance card pencil? Does any one have any clues? It is beautiful and will probably become my knit kit pencil.

Then my prize from Dave's Mechanical Pencils and Cult pens arrived, or rather I had to collect it from the local Post shop. This is nearly all of it, as my darling youngest cub has adopted her gift as her preferred pen and it now resides at school so was unavailable for the photo. In the spirit of the giver, I really tried to focus on pencils, so this is what I ordered :

1. Worther Slight Mechanical Pencil in Black with spare leads.
2. Faber-Castell Perfect Pencil Gift Set with a box of 12 replacement pencils.
3. Two Caran d-Arche Fixpencils, a 22 and a 77, leads, and a spare button, these are gifts one for Bear and one for S who gifted me the above book. gifts because I already have one and love it so much I want to share.
4. Tombo Mono 100 in B pencil x 3, these are rumored to be one of the best Japanese pencils on the market and I have not found any stocked locally so took the opportunity to try some, Bear gets one, I get one and we will see which of us gets the 3rd one.
5. Staedtler Mars Lumograph Pencil in B, x 2. Again not stocked locally but one Bear asked for one as he remembered Advts from his junior drafting days for these and always considered them the best but had never seen them for sale so had lusted after one as only a pencil trained draftsman can. He does have Mars Lumograph leads for his two vintage 2mm clutch pencils, and so has some expectation of the quality of the lead..
6. Schneider Base Fountain Pen in Boysenberry (as explained missing from photo) for the youngest cub, plus a converter so she can explore bottled ink, and a box of Diamine assorted ink cartridges colour way 'floral'.
7. Lamy Z25 converter so the other cub can take advantage of bottled ink in his Bright Yellow Lamy Safari fountain pen, and not be limited to the ink colours of Lamy cartridges.
8. One bottle of Edelstein Fountain pen ink, in Sapphire Blue, and two Parker Delux converters so I could upgrade the filling unit in one of my and one of Bears Parker fountain pens and play with a colour that is not readily available in New Zealand.

So... I'm happy, ecstatic really to be able to order without worrying about the cost and the shipping, such a lovely assortment of writing things. I treated myself to the Worther Slight, as I love my vintage mechanical pencils and they all take a 1.1mm lead, this seemed the perfect opportunity to invest in a modern production pencil in the same category of lead size. I won't go into to much detail here as I thought Dave might like a full review. Ditto the Faber-Castell Perfect pencil, I have used a junior version of this for ages now, the pencils are amazing, providing a very sharp black line but keeping a good point for ages. The extender doubles as a point protector and houses one of the most efficient pencil sharpeners I have ever used - one or two turns is all it takes to shave a pencil to a fine point. I took this opportunity to buy the 'gift-box' version for myself. I have given away so many of the junior perfect pencils at work to those who borrow and admire mine that I thought it might be prudent to have the grown up one to differentiate mine from theirs. Then the other items were all pretty much pure indulgences, gifts for people, family and friends, and things that I had heard good things about but not found locally, and things that made what we already had more useful.

Now having thanked S, Bear, Dave and Cult Pens .. I can move onto the knitting. The double knit mittens grow, honestly I love this technique but find the chart a learning curve of some steepness. I have frogged at least half a row once or twice. The above book has seriously distracted me most nights, and this week there was the additional iD fashion events that overtook my knitting time. Oh and on that side of things, the shows were amazing, I got to supervise students help Liz Mitchell fit her models and so saw her designs up close and in detail (just like the book!). The iD show was amazing, as always, but I'll leave it to you to browse and decide what ones inspire you, let me know what you think.

When I have not been able to manage the double knitting chart, and have not been distracted by the FF book ... I have managed to start the elder cubs second sock. Progress as shown, I am up to the gusset increases and onto the second colour of contrast yarn, soon the heel with start and then it will really look like a sock.

Then just to make my week even more exciting - the last installment in the Vintage Purls Sock yarn club arrived. The feature of this club is that it includes sock yarn but not necessarily sock patterns, as always this is is a colour and pattern I love. There is a yarn that has depth and warmth, and a pattern for gloves with a clever and decorative and interesting cuff with a real vintage feel, and then there is more. Tucked inside is a chocolate fish (a very New Zealand treat - most often used as small prizes in schools and learning situations), and more, a little pack of the most adorable vintage knitwear themed post cards I have ever seen. I know I have enough yarn .. but when her kits provide surprises like this ... it just have to have one.

Then lastly there is a pencil that youngest cub gave Bear. In truth it was a gift to her from a student teacher who was finishing her post with the class, a shiny new pencil for each student. Youngest Cub knowing how geeky her parents are about pencils and knowing it was Bears Birthday (56!) thoughtfully passed the pencil on to him. But what Bear noticed and what I love it that it is a fake pencil, oh it is a pencil all right, it sharpens and writes just fine so it is not really a fake pencil but a fake version of a famous high quality pencil, the Staedtler Norris Club HB Pencil, Made in Germany. What really makes Bear and I giggle is the name - Stapler, and the cubs just shake their heads sadly at what their parents find funny.

Thank you, for putting up with me and my non-knitting content, again.
Take care, knit some, perhaps even use an old fashioned wooden pencil, real or fake .. and enjoy the week.
na Stella