After waiting for 3 months, and some pushing for a faster resolution to not much avail, my husband has just received his background check clearance for the UAE. We are delighted and a little nervous as we dive into the unknown and resuming our energy to get move-ready. For my husband it will happen within a few weeks as he will move with a few suitcases full of clothes and may be a household item or two. I will stay around for another 6-8 weeks to finish up cleaning out the house and saying good-bye to friends and colleagues. I will keep you updated on the proceedings as they come along.

My timed two socks-at-a-time  on a magic loop – trial has come to an end and the result is in: it took me 10 hours and 45 minutes to knit up a pair of socks. That included lots of untangling of yarn every few rounds and two rounds of frogging: one round was ribbed out to get back into the pattern and half a round was knit back to separate the socks again. When knitting two items at the same time on one needle it is very helpful to use the yarn from a separate ball for each item. When I accidentally continued using the first yarn for the second sock they were very attached. 🙂

finished in 10h45m

after 1h30m on DPNs

I started a comparison sock knit on double-pointed needles (DPNs)  with a same size needle (3mm), same yarn, same sock pattern and size (German: 38/40 or US: 8) in grey. So far it seems to knit at least at the same speed or even a bit faster since I don’t have to untangle the yarn. It is easier to keep track of my pattern, too. But then I do only produce a single sock in the end and more often than not it takes quite a long time before I will start the second one. Which means I have to sit down and count the rows of knitting to match the length. So, that adds time… My plan is to finish one sock on the DPNs and the second one with two 3mm circulars to see if the use of fewer needles increases my speed. And still: the DPNs are my favourite method to knit socks.

Finally, there is some update what became of the two silk-based fibres. First I thought the colours of both fibres had some overlap in the peach and pink strands, but after spinning the singles with a semi-worsted draft one looked very much golden-hued peach while the other showed a brighter blue-ish pink tone. Since, it was not clear if plying them together would result in a muddled colour I decided to chain-ply each separately and keeping the option to knit them together to mix the colour for later.

3-ply (chain-plied, Z)

singles (S) on the bobbins

merino-silk (top) and silk fibre

Both ended up being a fingering to sport weight yarn: the peach colour silk-merino 87m/28gm (or 3107m/kg = 1413 ypp) and the pink-purple coloured silk 61m/20gm (or 3050m/kg = 1388 yap). There is no immediate plan to knit them into a hat or a cowl. They will live in my stash until their time comes.

Whilst dividing my time between spinning, knitting socks and test-knitting a scarf for my friend Uta I decided to take a class with Liisa Nieminen at WetCoastWools to become a faster knitter. Our first lesson covered continental knitting or “picking stitches” which is my accustomed way to knit, but to knit faster I have to break old habits and try holding my yarn closer to the needles. Not an easy feat which requires lots and lots of focus and concentration to not fall back into my comfort-zone. It is going soooo slow! Let’s see how I feel about this once I finished knitting our homework: two swatches. One will be knit “throwing” stitches or “English style” and the other with “picking stitches”.

I realized that my fibre activities in the past few months have been heavily based on pink, purple and red colours. May be, I was drawn to them for their brightness and splash of colour during the grey winter months, but I am missing blues, greens and brown. Time to change it up!

Until next week!