If you haven’t yet heard today’s incredible story about Blue Moon Fibre Arts Sock Club, head on over to Yarn Harlot’s blog. Muggles, indeed!

In retrospect, yesterdays post was a bit strange and that was probably because I wasn’t feeling too great. After roaming around adding interesting looking blogs to my list of favourites (with the plan to have more than two seconds of blog reading to entertain me in the mornings) I went back to bed and slept until lunchtime. After that I felt a lot better.

The cotton socks are past the heel and the weather is back to a pleasant 25 degrees today. I could start on Vero…

I have to confess, the Vero yarn isn’t one I would normally plan to buy. I’m not a big fan of varigated yarns. Yet its greeny bluey blacky enchantment overrode all normal brain activity and I had to have it. Maybe this was because I was on holidays and high on good quality chocolate and great company.

My plan, after I got home and back on planet earth, was to knit something modular, in strips. That way the stripes on the body would be around the same depth as they were on the arms, and it would be more interesting than a plain stripey jumper or cardigan.

I put that idea aside when I decided following a pattern would be faster and less taxing than designing. Besides, I hate sewing, and knitting something out of strips means a lot of sewing. But a few days ago it suddenly occurred to me that I could still do the strips, using the existing pattern, and cut out most of the sewing.

I would knit it as if it were intarsia.

I’d divide the front and back each into four sections, each knit with a different ball, twisting the yarn with the next ball as you do with intarsia. However, I wouldn’t knit it in the round as I usually do. I’d knit the front and back separately. Juggling four balls I can manage, eight will drive me crazy. And since my original plan involved a gadzillion seams, I reckon can cope with two.

Having done plenty of sock knitting during the day (while researching – I so love being able to read and knit at the same time!) last night I tried something different:

A crochet basket, ready for felting. I haven’t tried felting crochet before. I haven’t tried felting in a front loader. This should be interesting.