At the moment I have a lot of things on the go, and not many look like they’re going to be finished soon, so I thought I’d write a series of ‘in progress’ posts.

Here are my current socks-in-progress:

I’ve been working on these for months, I reckon. Too many other distractions and not enough waiting room or travel knitting time. The yarn is lovely, though I made the mistake of using the end from the centre of the ball and got constant great clumps of tangled yarn coming out.

In the end I had to unravel the ball completely and re-wind it, which was probably just as well as I found a bad join which I would otherwise have encountered in the middle of knitting the second sock.

I’ve had this yarn for nearly three years:

I intended to knit a vest, with stripes of the more textured yarn next to ones of the plain. But the yarns knit up at a different tension, I never found a pattern I thought it suited, and it’s alpaca, which doesn’t have much memory.

The other day it suddenly occurred to me that I could knit it doubled, putting plain and textured yarn together. I did a test swatch and loved the result. So I took a deep breath, did lots of math, and started designing a sideways knit vest. With short row waist shaping.

It’s already been knit to the halfway point and then frogged and reknit. But that’s what designing is like.

In complete contrast, I have this beside my work desk for when I want to think or de-stress:

It’s a ‘magic ball’ of yarn made from tying together yarn scraps. In this case, they’re loom ends. I’m not sure I’ll end up with something long enough to be a scarf, though. Right now I don’t care. I just want garter stitch knitting therapy.