Spot the difference.

Those are two strands of Harris Tweed from two ends of the same skein. Not a ball, cut and spliced to the necessary weight. That’s the same skein. I know one should expect natural variations from a natural fibre like wool, but come on. It’s stripey!

That being said, I’m not too sad about it. I made the discovery a point when I could use it so it looks like a ‘design element’ rather than a cock-up (no, I didn’t ball up all the yarn before I started knitting, that’s just not my way). I’ve divided the stripey bit in half and am using it for the lower half of the sleeves of my back-laced tunic. I think I can get away with it. This isn’t massively different, right?

These have been dark days.

O hai.

I’ve had a terrible time of it recently. Not the move, which went swimmingly. Nor work, as I’ve been on holiday the last couple of weeks.

It was the knitting what done it.

For a while, everything I started went wrong. Socks looked like penises. Jumpers looked like plungers. Colours pooled into vomity splodges. I just didn’t like anything I made. It was depressing as hell. I began to wonder if knitting was really the thing for me.

But then… I finished this:

 

And then I went a knitting show, bought a crapload of wool, from which I have so far made this:

And now an on-the-way-to-failcardigan is becoming this:

I feel so much better.

Failsock has failed. Partially.

So I ploughed on with the sock, and am now the proud owner of a very effective slouchy sock that cannot be pulled any higher than mid-calf, although (as was pointed out at the time) it could be a market-winner as a mildly sexy preventative against deep-vein thrombosis.

Tits.

This is it in its slouchy position:

 

Which is all well and good, but when you’ve spent that long doing a lacy pattern, you don’t want it to have ‘rumpled’ as its natural state. So I’m saying to hell with this sheet and starting over as a dodgy-czech-accented sock slut.

Why a slut, you ask? Because I’m doing two at the same time.

Check out that double-toed magic-loop action. Anarchy. Total anarchy.

Of course, once I’d worked out how to Turkish cast-on for two socks at the same time, I pronounced the whole thing as a piece of cake. It was only a couple of repeats in that I suddenly thought… but… how do I do the switching one stitch from one needle to the other in the middle of the row if… there’s another sock in the way?

I’m sure I’ll work it out.