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home to alternative complementary health |
| Fantastic sites for sock knitters |
| Socknitters homepage An amazing site including cyberclasses in sock knitting, patterns, tips, technical help and masses of inspiration. |
| Whippoorwillhill socks Another superb sock site. Check out the amazing index of sock patterns available on the internet, categorized by pattern name, size, yarn, stitch, style or construction. |
| Heels by number by Wippoorwillhill socks, the maths and instructions for V, round, rounder, square, modified square and band heels. |
| Toe index Different types of sock toes to knit. |
| The Sock Drawer
The Sockguy, sock designer and knitter. always worth a visit. |
| Useful websites for knitters |
| Fiber Art |
| Wool Works |
| Knitter's Review |
| Wise Needle |
| Anne's work on needles |
| Toria's Daisy Dark blue rowan felted tweed background and large but delicate daisy in rowan wool and cotton. Have finished daisy and entire front. Must start on back before I get side-tracked. |
| Rowan wool and cotton on various needles for swatches. I don't like any of their patterns, but I LOVE the yarn. |
| Socks in cream gansey 5-ply are coming down. Haven't really worked because I haven't sorted the tension out properly |
| Anne's work in her head |
| Marion Foales sweater Either Emily and Maud or Beth and Squash for the pullover with long waistcoat combination. In 4ply wool or cotton. Now, if rowan came up with 4ply wool and cotton... |
| Blueish socks for me German 4ply sock yarn 75% wool. Need some socks on the go. |
| Socks in cream gansey 5-ply Need to sort out the tension for these. Such a good idea, but so *hard*, as in *unsoft* to knit. |
| 'Rugger' by Marion Foales in rowan wool and cotton. For me. |
| Wool cotton sweater for Mi DH needs new sweater of the hand-knit variety. All I need is a good design for the yarn I love. Maybe 'Rugger'? |
| Blankets, blankets, blankets As in the book by Debbie Abrahams. They look soooooo much fun to knit. Haven't got any babies to knit for, so I'm not sure. Can I do one to sit comfortably in an English country house? Maybe the patterns in different shades of ivory / cream / dusty beige and sage green or gold or dusty pink for highlights. Ye gods, I think I've talked myself into it. |
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Daisy sweater is progressing up the back, but is a tad boring. Tant pis! 29th November 2002 Am doing ***free*** chair massage as part of an Energy Clinic promotion at Gossypium, Lewes' eco-cotton store on the High Street, next Saturday between 2pm and 4pm. Come along if you are out shopping! I love doing these events as people are soooo surprised at how fantastic massage is, and sometimes a little scared at how much they enjoyed it. And the fact that we don't have to take our clothes off to experience it suits us Brits :) If you are wondering where the link to a certain online knitting magazine has gone, I have removed it on finding a breathtakingly arrogant article slamming non-commercial knitting sites. Basically, they are saying that unless a person earns their living from publishing stuff about knitting, don't go there. I have made my views known. Click below on knitchatback if you would like me to send you the link so that you can comment to them yourself. Later... I have been thinking (what's new?) about what has annoyed me so much about this. Apart from a smug email from the editor, I think it is because of the control issue. Knitting has recently very much been the domain of the individual person (usually woman). Apart from periods in history when knitting was commercially important and women had to knit for income, or when guilds ruled the knitting world and women were not allowed either to join the guild or be trained as a knitter or even knit for domestic purposes, knitting has been seen as a low-level unimportant domestic activity that only women do. And in this position of engaging in a low-level activity they have had considerable freedom in what they knit. Now I come across someone (the editor of this publication) who claims that only commercial publications are fit to be used, because this somehow guarantees a degree of quality, which, she states explicitly, is not to be found in non-commercial publications. Apart from the despicable untruth about this assertion, what a cheek!!!!! I am not in the least against commercial undertakings (well, apart from this one, which I am still not mentioning by name, unless you specifically ask), but I support those individuals who publish the results of their skills for free. They are no more likely to deliver crap than the commercial companies, and are far more likely to offer individual, artistically and technically challenging and innovative creations which would not be mass marketable, and therefore not suitable for larger concerns who rely on very large takeup to survive. Visit to Toria's parents' evening went extremely well, and bubbly was delivered discretely. Saw loads and loads of my former colleagues (boy, am I glad I'm not teaching any more - they looked like the living dead, par for the teachers' course this time of year, I'm sure they won't mind me saying...) and had a very sociable time. Toz is, of course, being a girl with not a little ambition, doing very well. Well done Toz. Don't overwork, girl, you don't need the breakdown, and A instead of A* is NOT failure!!! 28th November 2002 Have been in clinic all day, so no knitting done yet. Jamtart is sitting on top of my monitor, happly soaking up the rays, so will have to be removed before she does herself any damage. Another huff in the offing, no doubt. Have finished ribbing on back of Daisy jumper and have started the stocking stitch bit (just done half a row, to rekindle the flame). Am just making fantastically easy last minute vegetable soup and I can smell it bubbling away in the kitchen. I might have to go and try it... We are due at Toria's school parents' evening (just form tutors, not the whole truckload of 'em), so little outlook for knitting. No, I know what you're thinking, I can't take it with me. Teachers need all the support they can get, and knitting may not do that. However, a bottle of chilled bubbly for her English teacher, who rescued me from yesterday's DfES incompetence is wholly appropiate. She gave me comprehensive answers in 3 minutes to questions which the head of the DfES languages team failed entirely to comprehend after 30 + minutes of patient explanation. Rearrange these words whilst I take a few deep breaths: not pissup a arrange could brewery he in a. 27th November 2002 Daisy front is entirely finished and back is started. Yippeeeeeeee! Have just found the TagBoard message board, and it's up and, I hope, running. Haven't received a confirmation email yet... have also installed the new Haloscan comments facility which is soooo exciting!!!!!! UK teachers will empathize with me here: I have spent hours and hours and hours on the DfES site, trying to find exactly what is required for the delivery of literacy in Key Stage 3 across the curriculum (yes, it's another book that I wished I hadn't taken on). I phoned them up. Very nice chap, didn't really key into the fact that I needed to know exactly what was required over Key Stage 3, so that I can tell modern foreign languages teachers how to fulfill their bit. Because fulfill it they must. Only nobody knows quite what... Seems quite simple really - look at the English scheme of work; or the programme of study; or maybe the QCA 'Objectives for Language for Learning in Key Stage 3; or maybe the mysterious references in 'Language at Work in Lessons' by QCA; or the 'Literacy Objectives' in the same document. Now that sounds more like it. Are they listed anywhere? Of course not. 26th November 2002 Book edits done and returned last night. I hope that's the last of it. They want to have it out by the end of November. That leaves 5 days including today. Do they still think they are going to make it? Have just discovered fantastic picis of Marion Foales sweaters on Wendy's Knitting (click left on pink column to see them; she also has cat picis up). Marion Foales had to be the most classy designer at that time (1985) and I knitted vast numbers of her simple sweatshirt for the kids, adapting for intarsia and fairisle as I went along. Wendy has knitted some grown-ups' sweaters which I now drool over. I have my MF book at hand and am contemplating 'Rugger' in Rowan wool cotton. I think the tension will work... I've been listing my work on needles and work in head (scroll down left hand side, blue and green backgrounds for curious cats). I think I have talked myself into a blanket from Debbie Abraham's book in creams/ivories/beiges with gold OR sage green OR dusty pink for highlights to sit on one of the sofas. And then 'Rugger' for Mi (DH) in rowan wool cotton, then 'Rugger' for me (with collar), then Beth and Squash (more Marion Foales - I hold Wendy entirely responsible - thanks Wendy!) when I can find a good 4 ply wool or cotton or wool and cotton (preferably), and some socks as I go along. Of course, this will change by tomorrow (teatime today?), so watch this space. I was just going into one of my 'drooling over cats' modes, when middle son announced that Jamtart had crapped in the bathroom. She is now sitting on the patio table outside looking very huffed, and I (and the bathroom) smell of disinfectant. Here is the culprit with a big grin on her face, about this time last year.
25th November 2002 Oh ye gods!!! I am sooooooo fed up with the last book (technical, modern foreign languages, was boring to do but will sell well, that sort of thing) and I have just received the second (last - please?) draft, with even more to 'tidy up'. Blessings and curses on editors. They check everything in so much detail which is wonderful, but also terrible. And they have 'corrected' stuff that was already correct and now have rendered whole passages unintelligible, not to say unusable. All ye gods!!!! Just leave it!!!! I always get to this stage just before publication and ****it doesn't get any better**** I'm coming across news snippets about knitting in public, like this one from the New Zealand Herald: Minister cannot knit while in the chair 24th November 2002 Daisy is finished - not the entire front, just the intarsia bit, but the rest will be a breeze :) I'm going to knit in a mini-flower at the bottom of one sleeve, and the top of the other.
Have discovered the 'Six Step Programme for Completing Challenging Creations' in Knitters' Review. Take a look. The mentoring thing - just being in contact with other knitters - works for me. French speaking knitters please go visit 'Au fils des aiguilles', knitblog by, I think, Clemence Joste. Listed in the pink column on the left. 23rd November 2002 New-to-me computer was lovely for about a day, but I failed to update Norton anti-virus and promptly got a nasty virus... the whole thing has had to be wiped and reloaded and my right eye is twitching badly :( But sock picis are here: top two are welly sox for Chris (with chris modelling them), next two are Toria's pastels regia socks, and the bottom one features my brown socks. Note the fashionable trouser statement for optimal showing of socks :)
I've just found a brilliant site full of knitters' profiles. You could stay there for hours... 17th November 2002 Daisy is being toughed out. Not too bad going, given a little improvisation where I have departed from the original design. (I think I become a little dylsexic reading graph patterns towards the end of the day). A couple of weeks ago my very elderly computer died (crashed four times, then wouldn't get out of bed at all), so I have acquired an ex-office one which is being honed into shape over several days. I didn't realise how much customizing I had done on the old one, and how that had hardwired itself into my fingers. Chocolate brown socks are finished and divine. Have been looking at the number of socks I have knitted since the beginning of October to distract myself from Daisy / work: welly-socks for Chris, Regia pastels for Toria, Regia reddish for James, blue and brown for me. That makes 5 pairs... Have been up in the attic for something boring, but discovered... a yarn stash!!!!!!!!!!!! Just enough of loads of wool yarns to make socksocksocksocksocksocksocksokcsoksclsocksocksokcsokcoskcoscs Still no-one actually making soap as opposed to strongly intending to? Not even for Christmas presents? How about liquid soap that you put in pump dispensors? Email me: anneknittingandsoap@alternativecomplementaryhealth.co.uk |
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 Socks, Socks, Socks Superb collection of socks ranging from very simple to technically intriguing. I want to knit the free-form ones on the cover. US shoppers click here: Socks, Socks, Socks: 70 Winning Patterns...  Hip to Knit: 18 contemporary projects for today's knitter, Judith Swartz stylish, colourful and disctinctly ungrannyish clothes and accessories US shoppers click here: Hip to Knit |
 Blankets and Throws to knit, Debbie Abrahams A vast selection of blanket squares (beaded, intarsia, striped) to knit up quickly. Plenty of ideas for fantastic contemporary looks for everyone from newborn to adult, or be inspired and design your own. Put it on your Christmas list! |
 Double Knits, Zoe Mellor Two versions of each child's garment, e.g. alphabet on one, numbers on the other, also shown in different colourways. All in double knitting. Perfect for twins!!! |
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How to Knit, Debbie Bliss This is the much acclaimed beginners' guide to knitting with simple, step by step instructions and illustrations. Still gets rave reviews. |
 Simple Knits For Cherished Babies, Erika Knight . Totally terrific, tantalizing togs for tiny tots! US shoppers click here: Simple Knits For Cherished Babies |
| Software for designers |
| Knitware Design This is a brilliant programme, and good value |
| PC Stitch for X-stitch for cross stitch designs |
| Moran software Fantastic sock knitting software for any foot size (shape!), any pattern toe up or top down |