I knuckled down over the weekend and finished these:

I ball of Regia sock yarn, I ball of black sock yarn (can’t find label). I couldn’t help stopping to admire these socks as I knit them. I like the effect the alternate stripes makes.

I also reached the first big stripe of the Liquorish Allsorts jumper:

The wool is from the Nundle Woollen Mills . It’s thicker and fluffier than Bendigo 8ply. It feels, well, less processed. Does that make sense? I feel no fear that my loose ends will ever come out – this wool seems to stick to itself like velcro. The fabric it knits up to is thick and firm, and the stitches almost appear to blend together. The wool is a little bit hard on the hands, too, but not so much that I dislike it. I think Dad’s jumper is going to be heavy and very, very warm.

I started this last night:

I wanted to make the feather and fan lace socks from Socks! Socks! Socks! and to try knitting socks with 2 circs. Well, even though I have more than enough cotton for a pair of socks I couldn’t help myself – I had to knit them toe-up. First I tried Wendy’s short row toe method, but I realised after half an hour that the sock was going to be too big. So when I restarted, I used the figure 8 cast on, as I could just increase from there until the sock was the right size.

Once the toe was done, I started the lace pattern. I wasn’t much liking the 2 circs method because by the time I’d slid the stitches across, fought to get them over the join, disentangled the circs from each other, disentangled the yarn from the circs, I could have knit another round on dpns. When it came to concentrating on lace, I decided to dump the circs and go back to my trusty dpns.

I haven’t yet decided whether I’ll do a short row heel or convert the pattern for an upside down gusset-style heel I worked out yonks ago for 8ply socks (blissfully ignorant that this might be at all unusual) to 4ply yarn.

I’ve got plenty of time to decide.