I had a beyond wonderful time at the last fair - a lot of people stopped by to say hello that I see way, way too rarely; I had lovely food (Margit treated me to Königsburger Klopse for one dinner) and lots of nice coffee and there was sunshine and warmth and general enjoyment. The fair featured a nice, large, well-lighted space with tables to sit and eat and drink and knit in one part, and most of the stalls in the second part, with a little foyer inbetween.

As usual, I didn't get out much from behind my table, but it was enough time to go on a button-hunting safari for the Most Patient Husband of Them All, who has almost finished knitting his cardi and needed buttons for that. So out I went, armed with a yarn sample (for colour coordination) and my phone and a size indicator and sent him photos of buttons I supposed might please him. I can definitely tell you that proxy-button-shopping is an exciting thing! (It was also successful, to my great delight.)

[caption id="attachment_3753" align="alignnone" width="1632"] As usual, I'm standing side by side with Margit from Alte Künste...


There was even a little knitting done in the evening - my five-toe socks are slowly creeping towards being done. And I definitely need to knit faster. Or spend more time knitting. Or, preferably, both... because, you see, there might have been a tiny little mishap at the fair.

You know that good resolution that we knitters tend to have? About not buying any more yarn before the last project is finished, or the stash has been diminished a little? Well. While I was flanked on one side by Margit's stall, I had Holles Wollfärberei on my other side. And when I returned from a quick run to fetch some coffee, I sort of got confused for a few minutes and turned left a few metres too late, and by the time I had sorted out my directions, I might have accidentally dropped some money at that stall, and some yarn might, in turn, have accidentally dropped into my bag.



I blame fair-addled brains. And her choice of blues.

So. That does look, to me, like a little cardi and a pair of socks, some assembly required. See why I need to knit faster?

(She has an Etsy shop. Just in case you wonder how to get that stuff.)

The little sock is growing, albeit slowly now that I am back at the home desk, working, instead of hanging out in trains, planes and airports with plenty of knitting time on my hands. I've turned the heel by now, though, so it is the slow way up towards the leg and cuff at the moment.



In terms of proper work-work, I'm still puddling around with the Textileforum website. It's growing, too - but there is yet quite a bit of stuff to do. Also, I'm wildly determined that 2018 will finally be the year that sees my thesis in English. Things are going on behind the scenes. Things that I will be able to tell you about soon. Sooooon...

Now that the current sweater is finished and I'm travelling a bit as well, I obviously needed a new project, something nice and small to take along with me...

...and it didn't take me long to find one: I'm making toe socks.

A bit of background for that? Here you go.
I love walking with bare feet, and I rarely wear shoes or socks at home when it is warm enough to go without. In autumn and winter, though, it's not so nice to have free but cold feet, so I walk in socks without shoes most of the time. I also have a very slight tendency to develop a bunion, as some orthopedic guy told me years ago, so I try to walk shoe- and sock-free as much as possible and consciously spread out my toes, countering that tendency.

Most socks still tend to slightly mash the toes together, and they don't grant the full freedom of toe movement that you have barefoot. The solution? Toe socks. These are a funny-looking thing, and they are a little weird to wear at first, but I like the toe-spreading freedom they grant. Except... I only have one pair up to now, and that was given to me by a friend who knit these socks for herself, then found out they don't fit her at all. They do fit me better than her, but the little toe is a total mis-construction, as it is too small and the start of the toe sits way too far at the front of the foot. Basically, that sock construction starts all the toes on one straight line. That works with fingers for gloves, but toes are much shorter, and they do start along a curved shape on the foot, so starting them on one line will not work properly with foot anatomy.

Fortunately, someone else has already thought deeply about it and came up with a really smart pattern for toe socks, where you start in the middle of the foot, knit towards the toes, then pick up stitches and knit the rest of your sock toe-up. Here's the pattern on Ravelry, called Funky Five-Toe Socks.



It's a little fiddly (I use thin yarn and 1.5 mm needles), it involves a generous amount of hedgehog wrestling, the yarn has lovely colours, and I'm having a bunch of fun with it.

Over the last weeks, I'v finally gotten around to get some more knitting done, too, taking the needles into hand in the evenings. So after working on it on what feels like ages, my Moyen Age sweater is finally nearing completion - yay!



With the shorter sleeves that I opted for and the rather large neck opening (which is part of the pattern), it will be a summer sweater more than a winter thing. It is a pleasantly written pattern, and it was nice-ish to knit. Nice-ish only because I did discover that I don't care much for sweaters knit all in one piece; I find the huge chunk of stuff it becomes towards the end fairly cumbersome and annoying on the needles. So the next ones will definitely be knit in pieces again; I'll take the bit of seaming them up over handling a gazillion tons of wool on each round any day.

 

... in Baton Rouge, heading for the trains...

It's finished, finally - I dealt with all the ends on Friday evening and got to wear it for the first time on Saturday. It's lovely, it's silky, and it is surprisingly warm yet light and not sweat-inducing... and it still gives me that earworm.

I'm talking, of course, about the silk Baton Rouge, and here it is:


I'm very, very happy with how it turned out. I'm also freshly in love with silk as a material, and there are wild plans for future knits quietly coming into existence in my head.


I made a few modifications (of course!) to the pattern - it's a bit longer overall than the original pattern calls for. The gauge is different too, so I basically knit size S, the smallest size given in the pattern, to end up with XS (about once the difference between S and M smaller than S). There's no shoulder shaping in the original, so I added the one from Vignette, and I knit a bit more straight up in the bottom front than the original demands, starting the V a bit later so it could actually close more in front.


I might add invisible press buttons to the front edge later on, but for now I'm happy with just the brooch to close it. Which was a wedding gift, and now it finally has a really appropriate place to sit and keep things together!

And here you go again, with an assortment of links in various flavours!

Maybe you have seen the claims that the Voynich manuscript has been deciphered - this has been debunked right away. Bonus article about how it's not been solved.

BBC Travel has a post about the last woman who works with byssus (the silk-like fibre harvested from the mollusc pinna nobilis).

In case you ever wondered where you'd end up if you could tunnel straight through the planet (who hasn't?), here is Antipodes Man and his map to finally solve this for you. (Spoiler alert: Chances are high you'd be swimming. Better pack those swimming clothes, and probably even better: a boat.)

If you're in the UK, UK Handknitting has a workshop list for all kinds of courses and workshops around knitting and crocheting... just in case you are looking for one (or maybe want to offer one).

And that's it for today. I hope you found something of interest!

The current knitting project, Baton Rouge, is coming near its end - the lace border around the front is almost done, and what remains now is to sew the (already blocked) sleeves together and sew them in - and then I'll have a nice new silk jacket.

There were a few tangles at the end (metaphorical ones) - I picked up more stitches than the pattern called for to have sensible spacing between the stitches in the first knit row, then worked k3tog instead of k2tog in the first lace row, after trying with the original setup for a bit and quickly finding that it made the lace too squished together.

The second, bigger, tangle happened about where the picture was taken - there's supposed to be four rows with yarnover holes as per the picture in the pattern. Which will happen if you make row 11 a p2tog, yo row and not, as the pattern also tells you, a p row (there are two listings for r. 11, and guess which one is first in sequence? Right. The purl one, which is the wrong one). So I purled a bit, then found the mistake, tinkered back and did the correct r 11.

Soon now. Sooooon. And once this is finished, I'll get back to the sleeves on Moyen Age!