socks in the Loire Valley

Joigny, River Yonne France.
I've knitted these Kaffe Fassett socks all through bus trips in the Loire Valley and finished them off while on a canal boat.
They have created great interest with one lady pleading with me to knit her a pair - but I've given them to the tour leader.

Noro Silk Garden socks

I didn't enjoy knitting these at all. The yarn is curiously springy and keeps folding back on itself; lumpy with bits of straw in it and it knits up hard and stiff. There were 2 breaks in the yarn and the colours are harsh - nothing like the sample shown on Simply Socks website.
A waste of money and my time!

Trekking hand art Mauritius socks

They look rather like Stephen's but quite a different yarn of 75% wool 25% polyamide so can be washed in the washing machine. While I was knitting I didn't like them much but now that they're finished I do. David has 11 pairs of hand-knitted socks so we've nearly reached his goal of 12 pairs.

NB: these subsequently shrunk so much they had to be given to Hannah for bedsocks.

deepsea socks go Melbourne

I finished Stephen's deepsea socks in time for our trip to Melbourne. We spent the night in his apartment at Freshwater: here he is modelling the socks on his 31st floor balcony overlooking the Yarra River and Melbourne CBD:

The wool is 30% silk 70% merino (sorry—hand-wash only Stephen) hand-dyed by dye4fun, an etsy.com seller in the USA. Dye4fun says: "this yarn is hand dyed in shades of blue, navy blue, and violet. This Deep Sea colorway has different intensities of color ranging from underwater shadows to light reflecting on the water. The color is randomly dyed, meaning that the yarn will not stripe or pool as you knit or crochet with it."

We went with Stephen and Julia on a progressive dinner along Southbank to 3 different restaurants, Pure South for entrée, Kouzina for main course and The Deck for dessert. Wonderful company and food and a great idea.

Kaffe Fassett's Exotic Easter

It's real winter now—cold and raining. Well, we can't have too much rain...

Astrid's Dutch Obsessions has sent me some more Kaffe Fassett wool, this time in Exotic Easter, pretty easter-egg colours for Alison.

birds' nest

I'm pleased to see that the birds are keeping up with the times and incorporating new fibres into their nests.

David found this tiny empty nest in the camellia courtyard yesterday and we are intrigued by how the birds have woven in an unknown green-ish fuzzy fibre—quite coarse so it didn't come from the clothes drier which has an outlet there.
The pieces of dry grass are fragile and need the green fuzz for stability.

Trekking Trinidad socks

My turn for some socks: I need them to go with my new purple jumper. I found this yarn on-line when I was googling to find out if Australians are allowed to take knitting on planes—because some Americans were chatting on Ravelry about what projects they take on planes. Strange, I thought, surely knitting needles are deemed a security risk... but knitchick has some hints at
http://acechick.typepad.com/knitchicks_features/knitting_on_planes/

Anyway the first Australian blog I visited said NO to knitting on planes so I read on and found a link to a wonderful source of sock yarn, Astrid's Dutch Obsessions in the Netherlands. I can't find this blog again but I like her idea that sock yarn doesn't count as stash so I ordered some too.

http://www.astridsdutchobsessions.com/scripts/default.asp

Astrid is very prompt with posting— I received the yarn in 7 days—and she doesn't charge an arm and a leg for posting.

Here it is: Trekking hand art 511 Trinidad 75% wool 25% polyamide and very soft. It came as a skein so this time we were very careful to wind the ball slowly.