Ladies Who Lunch

Yesterday evening saw me at the knitting group. I have come to really enjoy the company of this group of ladies (and occasionally some men) on a Wednesday evening especially because it can be enjoyed with a bottle of wine or some other alcoholic beverage (I have acquired a taste for strawberry perry). It can be rather amusing to watch the expressions on the faces of passers by when they see 20 or more people sitting down in a shop knitting and chatting.

Yesterday saw me showing off my sock designs to a few of the people present and they received many favourable comments. When I showed the first design (the only one of which actually has a pair of socks at the moment) I was immediately asked if the pattern was for sale. When I showed my 'Cards' series of socks there was more encouragement and amazement at my creativity.

I explained that I had even more design ideas tucked away in my brain and that I had given up plans to submit a lace design for the competition so that I could concentrate on socks as my entries for this year. It was at this point that Lorraine the lovely lady who works in the shop and answers all my emails about competition entries suggested that this could be the basis of a book. This set me thinking and maybe she is correct. Perhaps this competition has given me the push in the direction that my life needs to move in to. They say that there is a book in all of us, and it is possible that my book is not a novel or a piece of historical research as I had previously thought but something for knitters everywhere.

As I was chatting with the lady who got me to join the knitting group she asked if I was doing anything today. When I said that I wasn't, she suggested that I might like to join a small number of the knitting group who lunch together on a Thursday and who then make their way to I Knit London for the Thursday knitting group. With nothing of any importance in my diary for today, that is exactly what I am going to do.

I am going to be a lady who lunches and who knits too.

Leaving On A Jet Plane (Actually It Will Be A Bus)

To quote a song from my younger years 'My bags are packed, I'm ready to go' and it will soon be time to walk to the bus stop to catch my bus rather than the aeroplane of the song.

I have sorted out all my competition socks and put them and the wool that I have used for them into one bag so that I do not have to search for them when the time comes for me to start work on the competition pairs of socks. This bag has been joined by scissors, my charts, and my pad of graph paper and all of this has been put into my I Knit London bag.

I'm hoping that I will finish the first of the 'Full House' socks this evening and then it will be full steam ahead with the twin that will make up the pair. The next task will be to knit the other four pairs of socks that make up the 'Cards' designs.

I am now pretty sure that I won't have time to design and knit the lace scarf for the competition. Perhaps it was being a bit optimistic to think that I would be able to manage that as well as six pairs of socks. However, I have had another idea for a sock design so I may well add this to my entries if I can get the idea to work.

Whilst I have always done handicrafts, I have never really considered myself to be a creative person because I have always followed a pattern. Designing these socks has shown me that I was wrong and that I do have a little bit of a creative streak in me and that I should see where it takes me. Socks are a relatively easy starting point, but I have become hooked on designing things so I think that lace designs are going to be the next area that I concentrate my efforts on. Scarves to start with and then if these work well I will turn my hand to designing a shawl. This will be a much more difficult area to work in so I may have to wait until my concentration has improved significantly from how it is at the moment.

Who knows where this may all lead to.

Down At Heel

Just a quick update on the 'Full House' sock.

I'm just about to turn the heel. This is the part of sock knitting that I like most because it means that I am half way to completing it. It just so happens that the pattern that I have designed has approximately the same number of rows before the heel as it does after the heel.

Once I have turned the heel and picked up the stitches along both sides of the heel flap I will find out which of the suits comes next. I know it sounds daft but I have absolutely no idea whether the chart that I have used for the leg part of the sock will be used for the foot part (albeit only half of the pattern) or whether I will have to draw up a new chart.

My intention is that the vertical view of the sock will show all four suits. I'm just going to have to keep knitting to find out what will happen. I'm quite pleased with how the sock has turned out so far and I am sure that I will be pleased with the finished result.

It's time to get back to those knitting needles.

A Long Way To Go

I'm having real problems with depression at the moment and I'm finding everything difficult. This means that with my not being able to concentrate on anything for very long even the simplest things take much longer than they ought to.

For me, it's not the continuously feeling very low that is the worst part of depression, but the lack of ability to concentrate. Lack of concentration means that reading a book becomes very difficult because I have to read the same paragraph several times for it to make an impact on me. It's at times like these that I resort to old favourites; that is books that I have probably read many times before so I have some idea of what the book is about while trying to concentrate on the page. At the moment I am working my way through the Harry Potter books because children's books are usually easier to follow although that is not necessarily true of the later books in the series because they are much longer and far more complex.

Knitting, the hobby that has kept me going over the years, is also causing me some problems at the moment. In part this is being caused by the fact that I am trying to design sock patterns for the design competition. I have completed one pair of socks and I have knitted one sock of each 'Clubs', 'Diamonds', 'Hearts' and 'Spades' and I am working 'Full House' at the moment. This sock seems to require far more concentration than the others, probably because I am trying to work two symbols at a time on the sock ('Clubs' and 'Diamonds' at the moment).

I had asked whether it would be necessary to knit a pair of each design for the competition and today I have received the reply to my query. This means that I have to make a pair for each design so I have a lot more socks to knit before I am ready to enter the competition. Having to knit the additional socks means that it is now less likely that I will be able to enter a lace scarf in another of the competition categories.

Perhaps this is not such a bad thing because trying to do too much does put pressure on me at a time when I am less able to cope with it. Although I have already knitted the four 'suits' individually, I had knitted each of these socks as a kind of sampler. This means that I have to knit a pair of each of the designs as a finished product so as well as the pair that I am working on at the moment, I have to knit four full pairs for the competition. This is going to require some more wool so I will have to see about buying that later this week when I have a bit more money.

If I were to win one of the prizes in the competition, the prize money would ensure that I would be able to add to my wool stash to keep me going for some considerable time. And the possibility of my patterns being offered for sale would also mean that I could create a little revenue to supplement my hobby.

Although I have a long way to go to complete my entries for the competition, I am glad that I have decided to take on this challenge. So, keep your fingers crossed for me that the judges like my designs and award me one of the prizes.

Socks And Suits

I've not been feeling great for the last few days and this has resulted in me spending a large part of the last three days asleep. Fortunately I can sleep now thanks to the additional medication and getting plenty of sleep does seem to help me cope with things a little better.

I have now completed one sock for each of the four suits. I am happy with the socks for 'Diamonds', 'Hearts' ans 'Spades', but I have made a few alterations to the chart for 'Clubs' so a new sample sock will have to be knitted. However, rather than work on this single suit sock, I have drafted the chart for the 'Full House' sock and I have started knitting that. I've only done three of the 10 rows of rib for the sock's cuff as yet, but it shouldn't take me long to complete the cuff and then I can move onto the leg part of the sock and I have to admit that I am looking forward to seeing how this sock turns out.

I've done a bit of preparatory work on writing the patterns but I shall need to sit down and work on this earnestly over the next couple of weeks. I still have plenty of time before the designs need to be submitted but I also have a lot of work still to do. I am still hoping that I will have the time to create a lace scarf for the competition but it is going to be touch and go whether I can achieve this.

I am hoping to treat myself to a new book this week once my pension gets paid into the bank. This book is full of charts for lace patterns mainly of Estonian design, and it would be a wonderful resource for creating my own designs. So I will be doing a few calculations and if things look okay I shall be buying the book on Thursday and no doubt spend Thursday evening turning the pages slowly and trying to decide which patterns to include in my lace scarf.

Socks

It's knitting group at I Knit London tonight so I am about to pack some wool and needles in my bag and head off for an evening of knitting and chat.

My 'Hearts' sock was progressing well until I found that I had dropped a stitch and it had run down many rows. There was nothing for it but to pull out the needles and unravel the sock. A bit heartbreaking but that's the way it goes.

Instead of restarting that sock straight away I decided to have a go at drafting the chart for 'Spades' and start knitting that instead. The chart was fairly easy to draft and I am reasonably happy with how the Spade-shape looks on the sock. I'm working this one in shades of brown. I have almost completed the leg part of the sock so will be knitting the heel flap and turning the heel while at the group this evening.

I will start 'Hearts' again once 'Spades' is finished and then probably start on 'Full House' although I think that having worked on the other suits I am not so happy with 'Clubs' any more and may consider redrafting the design and knitting it again.

At least it keeps me off the streets!

A Sneak Preview

Bippidee asked in a comment to yesterday's post when you were going to get to see some photographs of my sock designs. The rules of the design competition are quite explicit on the fact that the designs should not have been published anywhere prior to the competition, however, I have managed to take a few photographs with my phone and I am going to publish them here. I must apologise for the quality of the photographs but I needed to make sure that I wasn't giving too much away. The socks also need to be blocked so that they lay flat, but that is a task that I am saving until I can do them all together so you will see that they are a bit puckered at the moment. However, I am sure that you will forgive me when you see what I have been working on.

Sock No 1

Sock No 2

Sock No 3

Sock No 4

As I say, the quality of the photographs leaves a lot to be desired, but proper photographs will be taken in the future and will eventually be published here once the date of the competition arrives.

From Diamonds To Hearts

I finished the 'Diamonds' sock last night and this morning started on 'Hearts'. It didn't take me very long to draft a chart which I thought might work and started knitting the sock. This was fairly early this morning; I didn't take my night-time medication last night so I managed to wake up fairly easily without any lingering sleepiness this morning. It didn't take me long to realise that it was going to be a very hot day and doing anything work-like was not going to be pleasant. So, I decided to go out for the day.

A walk to the bus stop and a short wait for the right bus to take me to Waterloo. I knew that if I carried on knitting the socks at the rate that I have been this week I would soon need some wool for the last two designs. I walked to I Knit and soon managed to find some wool in the same range that I have been using for all the socks in colours that I had not already used. I bought them and having put my knitting in my handbag before I left home I decided to sit in the shop and do a bit of knitting.

It was nice being able to sit in the shop knitting and chatting with Gerard (the shop's owner) and Coral who was manning the shop today. It meant that I spent a fair portion of the day in the company of other people rather than alone as would have been the case if I had not decided on the spur of the moment to go out .

I got a fair bit of knitting done while I was in the shop. With the first pattern repeat completed I was able to see that my first draft of the chart had been perfect and the heart shape seems to be perfectly proportioned on the sock. I wasn't sure that this would be the case, so I was prepared to have to unpick the sock and start again from scratch; a bit soul-destroying but the only way to get the design right.

I've managed to do a little more of the sock since I have been back home, but my indelicate problem is causing me a great deal of pain at the moment and it is difficult to find a comfortable position for sitting. I'll be glad when the middle of July arrives and I have my operation.

I have found that the pain is causing me to also feel a lot more depressed. When I am knitting I am able to forget how I am feeling, but while not concentrating on my knitting my brain has the opportunity to start the disturbing thoughts.

Forging Ahead

Knitting is probably the only thing that is keeping me going at the moment, so I can report that the latest design is progressing well.

This sock seems to be growing quicker than any so far. This may be because I am familiar with the basics of the pattern now, but is probably, in part, due to the fact that the 'Diamonds' design is easy to work and has not required me to keep looking at the chart. This means that each round seems to have been completed in record time and consequently the sock has grown at a very fast pace.

I have turned the heel and I am now starting the foot part of the sock. There is a good chance that it will be finished this evening so I will be able to start on the next design tomorrow.

Steph asked in a comment on my last post if 'Hearts' and 'Spades' were to follow and I can report that they are. 'Hearts' will be next followed by 'Spades'. When the four suits have been completed I will be working a design which employs all four of the symbols, and this is the design that I have tentatively named 'Full House', although 'No Trumps' is another possibility.

I have decided that I will spend part of Sunday actually typing up the patterns for the socks that I have already completed. Fortunately the socks are all based on the same basic design so once I have typed up the first pattern, it will just be a case of changing the charts for each pattern and altering any details that are specific to each sock.

It's a lot of work, but I am quite enjoying the opportunity to create something of my own design. And all this knitting is keeping my mind from dwelling on how I am feeling.

Clubs

I have finished the first of the socks in my 'Cards' series of patterns. I deliberately chose the 'Clubs' design first because I knew that it would be the most difficult to get right. And the number of times that I had to redraft the design and start the sock again shows that I was correct in that assumption. I am quite pleased with the resultant sock.

Today I have started on the second in the series, 'Diamonds'. This is definitely the easiest of the designs and seems to be turning out quite well as I am almost half way to the heel already. I shall do some more work on it before I go to bed and hope to get to the heel before I go to bed.

I still have to get some more information regarding the design competition itself so I must send an email to Lorraine tomorrow asking about what the standard list of abbreviations is, and asking whether I have to actually produce a pair of socks for each entry, or if one of each design will suffice. I am hoping that this will be the case as it will give me more time to concentrate on the lace scarf which is certainly going to be the most time-consuming of the things that I hope to enter.

I also have to sit down at the computer to write the patterns for each of the designs. Although the socks are all based on the same pattern it will be important to make sure that the instructions are clear for each of the designs and that the charts are correct.

There is a lot of work still to do but I am quite enjoying it and it helps to keep me occupied and stops me from giving in to the racing thoughts in my brain.

That Eureka Moment

I think I know how Archimedes felt when sitting in his bath he realised that a body immersed in water displaces its own volume of water from the container in which it is placed.

For me, my 'Eureka Moment' came this afternoon when I realised that the latest version of my sock design was actually producing the effect that I wanted. After a number of false starts, I had finally got the stitch pattern right so that I was able to produce something that resembled a club such as those found on a playing card.

I know that I still have more designs to create, but the club symbol was always going to be the most difficult to produce for my planned series of patterns. This means that I can now press ahead as fast as my fingers, and mood, will allow me. I shall make one sock of each pattern as quickly as possible and write up the patterns complete with their charts so I have them all ready to submit. I'm going to ask if it is necessary to submit a pair of each design so as to allow me as much time as possible for the lace scarf design.

Despondency had started to take over last night when I realised that the design that I had hoped would look okay, in fact did not and needed to be redrafted. Mr Smiley often used to tell me that I should persevere when I found things difficult to do because of depression. And that is what I have done over the last few days; I have persevered and kept working at it until I had achieved what I wanted.

The sock will take a couple more days to complete, but knowing that the most difficult design has been nailed means that I can knit with renewed vigour. After this design the others will seem pretty simple and take only a few minutes to draft onto the graph paper. And they will actually be easier to knit too.

I didn't shout 'Eureka', but I did think it. Oh yes, Archimedes, I have an idea of how you must have felt at that moment.

Trying To Beat Depression

I had hoped that with the additional medication that I would have started to feel better by now. Yes, I am getting the sleep that I need, but my mood does not seem to be getting any better. I do have occasional short periods when I am actually able to feel that things are going well but they are interspersed with long periods when I continually question why I bother with carrying on living.

I have been concentrating on my knitting in the hope that will help me through this difficult period. Having decided to enter some designs in the I Knit design competition has given me a focus. I am not just following somebody else's pattern, I am trying to create my own. And it isn't easy.

I am not a naturally creative person. Yes, I am able to follow a pattern to make whatever I want. I can knit, crochet, do cross-stitch, embroider, sew my own clothes (although I haven't done that for some years), make cards, and scrapbook. Lots of things that might be called creative, but for me creative also means making something from scratch; not following a pattern or a guide.

Creating a few sock patterns has been a major challenge for me, and I have not found it easy. I know what I want to do but actually being able to translate that into a finished article has proven more difficult than I thought. I think that part of the reason for this is because I am unable to draw anything so that the result I produce is recognisable as what I was aiming for.

This has meant that I have had to create a number of drafts of the chart for the second of my sock designs. I have had to make the design much larger than I had originally intended for it to become obvious what is being represented. I have probably chosen to do the most difficult one first so I am hoping that the next three designs will be a little easier to draft and then knit.

This afternoon I have started to knit the design that I have been working on for the last three days. Even as I have been knitting it I have thought of a way in which I can give the pattern more impact. I am hoping that I will be able to do enough of this first sock today to be able to show whether the pattern is viable as an entry in the knitting design competition. If it is, then I shall finish the sock as quickly as I can and complete its pair so that I can move on to the next design. I am hoping to be able to enter six sock designs in the competition, and that is a fair bit of knitting, but I also want to enter a lace scarf and that is going to be a much harder item to complete as it requires much more knitting and a lot of concentration while doing that knitting. I also have to create the pattern for this scarf and that is going to have to be done as I am knitting the first half of the scarf. I have about seven weeks to do all this knitting and it is going to be quite a feat to be able to complete it all in time.

To do this means that I am going to have to set aside a period every day where I knit like there is no tomorrow and I am hoping that this will help me to get through the next few months and not have depression dictate how my days are spent.

Back To The Drawing Board

Having drawn up the four charts for my 'Full House' sock designs, yesterday evening was spent knitting a trial swatch to see if the charts produced the effect that I was looking for. Unfortunately, I have failed at the first hurdle for although the draft charts looked fine, when they were transformed into knitting they didn't have the impact that I was looking for.

This morning I have done another test using just one of the charts, this time testing whether the design looked better as stocking stitch against a reverse stocking stitch background, or reverse stocking stitch against a stocking stitch background. Again, the effect was disappointing so it was back to the drawing board.

For my third attempt I am going to increase the size of the motif in the hope that it will look better when knitted up. I have redrawn one of the designs in this larger size and I am about to knit the test swatch to see if this version is any better.

Having to use larger motifs means that there will only be four on each sock, and the impact of the fifth sock design will not be as great as I had hoped but I will still be able to put all four motifs on one sock which means that I should still be able to create this set of designs as I had originally envisaged.

While there are many exciting sock patterns out there for anyone to try, sock designs for men are a bit more difficult to find. I am hoping that the 'Full House' set will be able to fill the gap in this area. It does mean that I am going to have my work cut out knitting all these socks for the competition, but I am hoping that the originality of the set of patterns will give me a bit of an edge when the judging occurs. Winning one of the prizes would give me some extra funds to spend on wool to add to my stash. And their stash is every knitters home for future projects and dreams of things to come.

Creating Charts

I went into WH Smith today to buy myself a small ruler and some graph paper. It's a long time since I have used graph paper (Madsadgirl left school a long time ago and didn't do maths during the last two years of school) but I needed some to be able to draw out the charts that will be needed for my knitting designs.

The charts will eventually have to be put onto the computer so that I can print out the patterns and create the electronic copies that are also required. But for playing around with designs and doing my test pieces graph paper is just the thing to use. I bought some graph paper on Tuesday but didn't look closely enough to the paper that I bought and it wasn't until I had got it home and tried to use it that I realised that 2mm squares just weren't big enough to allow me to put the various symbols into them.

The pad that I bought today has 5mm squares and I have already managed to draft out the designs for one of the socks that I am creating. Having managed to work out what stitches I wanted where to create the pattern, I then had to redraft the charts with the designs upside down because I am knitting the socks from the cuff down to the toes. Unfortunately I am unable to post photographs of the socks that I am designing because of the competition rules, but once the competition closing date has passed I will see what I can do.

I have also decided to design a lace scarf for the competition. This also requires lots of charts to be drawn up to work from. I have done the first chart and I have managed to knit this chart. As I want the scarf to be a bit like a sampler I have to work out a number of charts to provide a good range of designs but there must also be some form of linking between them, so I have decided to make it themed on butterflies and flowers/leaves. To ensure that the designs are the right way up when the scarf is worn it will be knitted in two halves and then the two grafted together. This will be a first for me as I have always knitted lace designs that could be viewed from either direction. I'm quite looking forward to the challenge.

Another Hot Day

It's nearly 10.30am on this Monday morning and it is already too hot to do any more work in the garden. I've managed to finish the job that I was working on, but there is still more work to do and the rain on Saturday night coupled with the hot weather means that the grass is growing at an alarming rate. I guess it will be out with the lawn mower early tomorrow morning.

Moving back indoors to get away from the heat of the sun means that I will probably have time for more knitting today than I would normally have. I'm still being very naughty and not finishing the summer tops that I have been working on. Instead I have been concentrating on the shawl that I started last week.

There are eight charts that make up the pattern and I have just finished the fourth one. I now have something like 560 stitches on the needle and each row is taking longer to knit as the number of stitches increases. There are still 82 rows of the main shawl to be knitted which means that there are still another 328 stitches to be added to it. By the time that I reach that stage each row will become quite slow going.

I still have not decided what sort of edging that I am going to use on it. I think that I will wait until I have actually finished the main pattern so that I can work out the best way to finish it off. I'm thinking of making it quite a deep edging as it seem that I will have a fair amount of wool left for the finishing off, but it will require some careful calculations for me to determine how many 'points' the edging should have on each side and on each of the corners so that it gives a pretty edging that will ripple a little. The problem with this is that maths is not one of my strong points. I have number dyslexia and find it very difficult to work these sorts of problems out so there will probably be a lot of numbers being written out on paper and drawings of how things break down before I reach a successful conclusion.

This will be the first time that I have designed anything like this. While I have adapted patterns a little in the past, I have never created something like this from scratch. However if the it turns out successfully, I intend to try to design a lace shawl from scratch and if it works out well I may see about getting it published. Lace knitting is increasing in popularity again and with so many beautiful yarns available to do such work, there seems no end to what can be achieved.