the stocking to end all stockings is currently blocking. luckily it doesn’t seem to have expanded to the size of a small country in the process as feared, so i must stop buying odd little extra things to make it seem a little less empty come the big day.

the pattern is red bird knits’ winter dreams, possibly a little ambitious for a first fair isle project, but it’s exactly what i’d envisaged; something totally wintery and frosty and crisp in those 2 shades of blue. it’s in aran weight blue faced leicester on 5mm needles. the little tension glitches appear to be (mostly) blocking out pretty well, and once i’d got into the swing of things it was really quite straightforward. this was my first ever top-down sock too, and the magical turning of the heel was well explained.

there were 2 significant errors in the pattern, the most obvious of which (absent flourishes to the left of the main snowflake pattern) i spotted in time. but i missed the other (the horizontal bar across the bottom arm of the small snowflake is in the wrong place) totally at the top of the leg since i was concentrating so hard on everything else at that stage! so decided to repeat the error on the toe, and have them match, rather than correct it. must remember to let rbk know.

i also made a couple of cock ups of my very own. most significantly, i thought i was being clever by adding an extra quarter round of stitches before the heel, to place the large snowflake motif on the sides of the leg rather than front/back - since a stocking is only really seen from the side it made sense to show the whole pattern. it didn’t occur to me to check that this placed the start/end row seam at the back of the leg, and of course it didn’t, it put it slap bang at the front and of course i didn’t realise this until i’d knitted rather more of the heel than was worth ripping and reknitting. i thought i demonstrated an admirable lack of perfectionism in letting that one go

i forgot that slipped stitches should always go purlwise until half way through the heel, but even i can barely spot the twisted stitches when i’m looking for them. i got my k2tog and ssk decreases mixed up on the gusset, so it’s a litte untidy in places there. oh and for balance i should have done the tip of the toe in the paler blue, i think, so top, heel and toe matched.

but all that aside, i love it and i loved knitting it (for the most part, the 80% complete ennui still kicked in as per usual). it’s absolutely everything i wanted, and i hope madam pauses long enough in her wrapping ripping frenzy to at least notice it.

first off i have to say i have absolutely no idea how anyone manages to make and blog at this time of year. but at least i’ve been doing the making, the blogging will catch up eventually.

i’ve had great fun swatching cashmere. cavalierly tossing it into the washing machine with casual glee was possibly the highlight, although sitting with the washed swatch draped across my arm all evening because i just couldn’t put it down (i’ve never touched pure cashmere before) was another.

it turns out that i should read auctions a little more carefully. what colourmart lists as 4ply actually varies significantly in weight. this is fully detailed in the auctions but until you have it in your hand the difference between 2/16 and 2/13 is rather opaque. eventually i worked out a balance between my various “4ply” yarns and the triple wound white laceweight that turned up at the last moment to save the day (white isn’t available very often, apparently, and they weren’t expecting any new 4ply for a while).

i’m using the pink and green yarns (both 2/13) singly and the orange and blue (4/28 and 2/16 respectively) doubled, which balances weight-wise pretty well with the white (triple-wound 2/36). the first number refers to the number of plies, the second to the meterage per gram, so it’s logical and equivalents can be calculated, but the real world difference between the weights has to be felt i think. for those in less of a purchasing frenzy (if i didn’t jump all at once i probably would have had sober second thoughts and not bought at all :)) the sample set of different weights would be a very wise investment.

i knitted the swatches on old uk size 10s (3.5mm) which i think were just a mite too large, i’ve ordered some addi turbos in 3mm. the finished fabric is uber-drapey and could take a little more body. the cashmere itself is much flatter than an equivalent wool - the moss stitch borders have flattened significantly after washing. it’s also quite crushable, without so much of that wooly spring (although the knitted fabric structure still gives it reasonable stretch and recovery).

the difference before and after washing is amazing. because the yarns are oiled for machine knitting they bloom significantly after a swim. the main thing i wanted for a baby blanket was machine washability so i’m treating my swatches mean, a full 40 degree wash minimum, although tumbling’s not so important to me. i’ll wash at least another couple of times before i set to work on the real deal, to see how well it’s likely to hold up. it’s shrunk exactly as predicted: 10% in the length, but barely at all across the width.

i just can’t get enough of the softness, and i love the colours, although i’m not overly taken by the way the colours interact in the moss stitch border. am wondering if it’s even slightly possible to put a white border all around, but the practicalities of that (and the additional ends i guess it would entail) makes my head hurt. i might go for plain stockinette and crochet the border instead.