Warming crafts: A tale of yarns and shoes

I finished Lilac and Linen on Friday night, it's a 3-ply fingering weight which is what I was aiming for. The fibre was Merino/Nylon pin-drafted and is rather lovely. Should make beautiful socks once I've finished the current 2 pairs on the needles.

The weekend held good and bad; Thomas and the boys came into town with me on Saturday while I went to the guild which was good, the bad was that the boys weren't quite as well behaved as he'd hoped so I had to leave a little early; nothing bad really more high spirits but considering they almost ended up with Ian under an SUV I think Thomas made the right decision. While at the guild I got a reasonable amount done on my first ever colourwork socks; these are being knitted using stranded knitting and just 2 colours. The pattern is Bug Out which is the second Vintage Purls Winter Sock Club 2010 pattern and is just yummy!

I'm so glad I managed to get into the sock club, I was really hoping for a colourwork design and I got exactly what I wanted! I'm enjoying this so much that I'm already planning my next project which will be a hat in Jamiesons Shetland Spindrift, then a vest in Jamieson and Smith's Shetlland Jumper Weight and then my Henry VIII.
Getting back to these socks though, on the left is the top of the sock.

On the right is the bottom, you can just see the squashed bug starting to emerge; isn't that just great?

After we left the guild we went to get shoes for the boys, George's old sneakers were pretty cheap and you could tell, they were literally falling apart. This time instead of Dowsons we went to Hannahs and got the boys each a pair of these:

They're New Balance sneakers and both boys love them. Ian's in size 13 and George in size 1, they were marked down to $49.95 from $69.95 and I really hope they last well. If they don't then it's back to cheap shoes for the boys again.
When we got home Ian got into his Dad's Judo Gi; perhaps a little too big? He really liked it though, pity he doesn't listen when we try him at a class. George does Judo on Monday nights but he's only recently started getting it and tonight is testing night so we'll see just how much he has been listening!

Saturday night Ian wore his second pair of new pyjamas for the first time, I'm really pleased with these, they're so cute!

Still a bit big atm, but that's not a bad thing for a growing lad.

Sunday; the usual boot camp in the morning and she pushed us hard! The boys were playing on their scooters in the skateboard ring and having a blast which was good. Bacon and eggs for lunch; yummy. In the afternoon Mum rang to say they'd be coming over as she's finished George's new jersey. Now George has recently decided he doesn't like wool as it's "scratchy". However it's only scratchy if he knows it's wool; he has some wool singlets, the cream ones are scratchy (Merino), the marled grey ones aren't (wool, but not Merino) so I don't think it's a true wool allergy; just a perceived one. When Mum arrived with this jersey however it was immediately labelled as "not scratchy"; do you think he likes it? The colour really suits him; it's a discontinued Ashford Tekapo colour called Tartan. It's got an argyle looking pattern on the front and back with the way the pooling has worked out and fits him quite well, a little growing room in this too.

Once Mum had handed this over it was time for her to get the knit I'd made for her. This is Swallowtail knitted in a hand-dyed 100PureWool laceweight yarn, the colours are light enough that they'll go with most things and despite Mum having said on another occasion that shawls weren't much use she loves this one. The really nice comment was made of "Gran would be really proud of you". Gran was the ultimate knitter in our family, lovely even work and churned out a lot of knits in her time for us and also to sell. He colour sense was a little unusual, but there was love in every stitch; just like there was in Mum's new shawlette.
I was planning on holding onto this till Christmas, but it'll get used now seeing as it's winter so I decided to hand it over now; I can always make something else for Christmas if I draw Mum.

2 more photo's to come, the first is of the wonderful fibre swap that arrived here this morning, this is from Kate in New Plymouth. Thomas will get the chocolate, I'll drink the hot chocolate and needless to say I'll be spinning and knitting the fibre; it's very nice indeed, and there's some very cute wee flowers that I think were crocheted.

Last photo is one I've been trying to catch for some time now, but Smokey always seems to have finished her investigations by the time I finally get the camera. Here she is though, washing machine cat!!