Monday 16 February 2009

Monday update

The slowing economy is definitely hitting Etsy...my sales have dropped off almost completely. When then means, of course, that I have no Paypal dollars to spend in other Etsy shops. I would like to get some more interest in my shops - have you got any ideas? Are you running a raffle or charity project and need donations? Let me know!

This past weekend I spent a lot of time working on my current pair of knitted socks. I've been suffering from second-sock syndrome, and have had only one done for ages! But this weekend I managed to turn the heel and am now decreasing the gusset. Nearly the home stretch! The yarn I am using is Trekking sock yarn, same as always, and it's one of my dye jobs. It was a failed experiment, unfortunately. My idea was to get a variegated yarn by dyeing a skein red, balling it, and then dyeing only the bottom half blue. Unfortunately I think it was balled too tightly, as the dye didn't permeate as far as I had hoped. The result is a red yarn with lots of blue at the start and then less and less as it goes on. I didn't feel that that was good enough to sell, as I will only put my best work on my shops. So it's socks for me! The first sock has a cool blue spiral down the leg, and less and less blue as it progresses to the toe. The second one doesn't have nearly as much blue, but does have the occasional dark blue stitch, which is kind of interesting. I'll certainly never have a problem telling the right and left apart!

DH has asked me for some knitted fingerless mitts! I think he was inspired by the ones I made recently for Lesley (photo shown below) and the fact that it was really cold outwide when he was playing his fiddle on the weekend. So I'm going to make some from brown shetland.



That picture shows Lesley's mitts in handspun BFL and alpaca. The pattern is Waffle Stitch Fingerless Gloves by Jill Toporkiewicz, available free on Ravelry. It's a great pattern - easy to read and really quick to do! The spinning took forever but the knitting was only one night per mitt.

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