Do I continue with the first sock knowing that it will show up some time? Do I abandon the wool and start with something else? Do I think that pattern was working anyway?
I'm just not sure about this one. Maybe it's the universe telling me this one is not working out. Maybe the knitting muse has taken that ball away until I can be trusted to do something better with it?
The pattern does show up more without the colour to distract one. But the point of hand painted wool is that the colour is wonderful, right? So back to the drawing board.
I know I didn't throw it out, a perfectly good ball of lovely blue on blue wool, I couldn't have could I? Could it be in the bathroom? I'm always leaving my glasses in there. How about the basket by the door? I should check every corner because those balls do roll.
Excuse me, I have some more searching to do,
-Deb
So I decided I should start a major household project while there were fewer people around. This is my living room floor. It's painted, but now it's in rough shape since we did it many, many years ago. It now looks like this.
Lots of wood showing where the paint has chipped off. But it's lasted about 8 or 9 years so I'm not complaining at all. It needed a new coat of paint and a new look while I was at it.
It's brick red and wet but it looks good. I need to sponge it with another colour so you can't see every little scratch but I opened some other used cans of paint I had around and nothing worked. I tried another red on it but it looked pink when it dried. And I tried a browny colour but it was very light in colour. One day when my husband and I have had a couple of beers we'll get some paint colours together and decorate the floor by splashing it around. Last time we did it from one end to the other and backed ourselves into the bedroom for the night. Didn't really know what it was going to look like until the next day. But it was all good. 
Remember these 2 hats? They are the same pattern but knit in 2 very different wools. The one on the right is in sock wool (fingering) in a small adult size and the left pink one is in aran (heavy worsted) weight wool for a child's size. Same pattern, different number of stitches and different sizes. My daughter liked the sock wool hat and asked for one in white to match her winter coat. I started that in Kroy's Sock wool which was the whitest sock wool I could find and wrote out a more formal pattern as I went (from the scratchings on the back of an envelope that not even I could entirely decode). 
This is my pattern to enter into the running for our new project - the Hat booklet (I will think of a better name but for now. . .). We will be at this for several months but the weather is perfect for hat knitting and I can't wait to see what the other designers come up with. Always a surprise and lots of fun.
I'm almost up to my preferred number of projects. Just one more to make things interesting. I like to give myself an exploratory project too. So for my own education I am going to explore how best to use handpainted wools. 
This one goes from navy to light blue in large segments and ends up very stripy. I tried the pattern above and decided that the stripes obscure the lace pattern so tried again with a larger pattern. 
This seems to work better. I can see the pattern despite the stripes. I have divided the stitches onto 3 needles and am working the pattern across one of the needles for the top of the foot. This makes my pattern 21 sts across which is fairly large I think. When I get to the leg I will work it around the whole leg, one pattern repeat per needle (3 needles). At least that's the plan so far. 
I went through a basket of samples, even took my socks off and passed them around. I was in a quandary about patterning socks so posed the question: When you put a pattern on the centre top of the foot, should the pattern look correct to the knitter looking down at their own sock as it's being worn or should the pattern look correct to the casual observer of the sock? The vote was very close but the "knitter looking down at their own socks" won. Must be some sock knitters in the crowd, Thanks.
I have worked back and forth on the buttonband stitches attaching it to the back of neck stitches as I worked across to the centre back of neck from both sides.
Then the two sides of the buttonbands which meet at the centre back of neck were joined with a 3-Needle cast off.
Really looks like a sweater now. I have knit the sleeves to just above the elbow. Did I show you how the sleeves come out?
Here it is sans person.
One evenings work and the first sleeve is completed. One more evening and the second sleeve was done. Popped it in the washing machine on delicate and there it is. It's drying now and I have some wooden buttons for it.
I have the Guenevere (
And I'm going to redo my pink hat in this. There is some orange and the littlest bit of green in there with the pink (from 
And there MUST be something I can do with all these little balls in the bottom of my sock wool box.
It will come to me, probably in the middle of the night!
Where? It's right there, yes, that little V at the top. That is the beginning of the sleeve. Honest. And there are two of them.
Would I lie to you? This sweater is getting big and will get bigger still. And they will start to look like sleeves pretty soon. I also have some swamp, er, drought-free land for sale. Any takers?
The thumbtack is in the last buttonhole and you will notice that above it there is an extra ridge (3 ridges instead of the previous 2 ridges). The extra ridge is 2 extra short rows which are worked in buttonband only, just below the beginning of the decreasing for the V neck, to make a better corner for the buttonband. Both buttonbands have this. The scissors point to the first decrease which is in the Body beside the buttonband. The second decrease has just been worked right beside the marker. The texture pattern is so nice and easy that working the decreases and working the pattern at the same time is no problem.
