Ugh, rain rain, go to Spain...

and never come back here again.

Ugh, it's been raining for the past two weeks and I feel positively waterlogged. *sigh* I need to teach English in Barcelona.

Anyway, I'm being good. I'm spending all this month doing swatches. That green blob to the right- is my swatch for thermal, done with Bergere de France's ideal (40 wool/30 acrylic/30 percent polyamid). I like the yarn on first knit - non snagging, fairly soft to knit with and non itchy.

The only drawback is that there seems to be a 'halo' around the stitches. I'm not doing all that work to have stitches with 'halo' (click on picture to make it bigger). I've been told that Rowan yarns are coming out with a nice new '4ply/fingering yarn' within the next two weeks, and that I should *wait*. The colours are supposed to be brighter, which is good, because the original muddy colours in the 4ply yarn doesn't really suit me at all.

The swatch in the round isn't so difficult, and if you're not careful, you might find yourself doing two purl bands instead of one. It's an effective stitch - and an easy one.

That sock on dpns (so *odd* to be working with dpns after discovering the brilliance of knit picks flexible cords for doing stuff in the round) is Roza's socks by Grumperina. I'm doing this in a random yarn of wool/ramie blend (don't know the name, sorry), on 2.5mm needles instead of 2.0mm. The pattern is easy, even straight forward. It looks rather classy, a band in 3x3 rib, then a garter stitch band, and the rest done in brioche stitch. This design deserves a better yarn than the one I'm knitting with, but needs must.

I'm doing these socks on my off time. If I'm watching TV, I have the socks in hand. If I'm on the bus (and my fingers aren't freezing), its the sock and nothing but. In supermarket lines, meetings, and me waiting outside for half an hour (for an interview), I am knitting this sock. I must admit, I'm not a sock knitter per se, but I do like the architecture of socks.


That sock yarn (regia bamboo) and that purple ball of yarn (Lane Borgosesia- I should have bought 10 balls) are going to be swatched together. I'm thinking of using the sock yarn as in the style of fair isle. I got this idea based on this person's mittens . The sock yarn I have is a bamboo/wool/polyamide mix. It is teamed with a 4ply yarn - 100 wool. On 2mm needles. Will that be warm enough? Or should I just do 100 percent wool?