Charade Socks FO

Phew!  Finished!

Over the past year I've found myself wanting to make new socks - not least because they're much more comfortable to wear than shop-bought ones - but when it comes to actually getting on and knitting them, it's a different matter and each pair is taking me ages to complete.

I cast off a pair of Charade socks yesterday though.  The yarn's Schoppel Wolle Admiral Ombre in an orange variegated colour.  As per usual, I took the stitch pattern from the sock, but made them toe-up using my own variation of a heel turn.  I did try and get some photos of how I do my heel turn on toe-up socks, but they were taken before I'd bought the New Camera and aren't clear enough.  I'm thinking of doing a photo step-by-step using some plain acrylic DK and 4mm needles as I think that might be easier to see.

I just took this shot outside (one some plain lining paper) on the front step as I think it shows off the yarn colours best.  It's funny how yarn can knit up differently than you thought it would, don't you think?  With this, I thought it would be more heathered, but you can see stripes of different oranges, and the fabric has more of an overall burnt orange look than the zingier 'fruity' orange I thought it would be.  I still like them though.

The pattern's very easy to do.  A simple herringbone-type rib, two rows, every other one of which is just plain knit.  I did modify the pattern ever so slightly.  The pattern's a 4-stitch one and is written as (k2, rib2)  repeat, but I did it as (k1, rib 2, k1) repeat so that the pattern was centred on the stitches of each needle.

This is close-up of the stitch pattern:

The weather's much more summer-like this week, so Jess and I have been enjoying our walks in the morning.  Today, we were out for about an hour (with a couple of stops to chat to people we know) and I took her past the local primary school, down to the river, along the river path that runs behind the Fiveways supermarket, then back, along the road and up the lanes on our housing development.  After her breakfast and a big drink of water, she's spent most of the time since we've been back having a snooze!  Jess has also been very much enjoying that the wheat in the field behind us has grown a lot in the last few weeks and has been rushing about in it at every opportunity:

As you can see, even though we live in a rural part of the country, I keep her on her lead when we're out and about.  Although there's a field behind us, it gets quite busy with other dog-walkers as well as people walking to and from the train station or the shops and as she's 2 1/2, she's still quite a young dog and gets distracted quite easily (she wanted to take off after a rabbit she spotted the other evening).

I'll be back soon.  I cast on some new socks yesterday and despite what I said earlier about socks taking me ages at the moment, these are knitting up very fast.... let's hope the momentum keeps going!