Toe-Up Socks Rock!

Friday 22^nd April 2011

The little things in life make me happy.  Also the shoes and handbags, but anyway… Yesterday, a friend of mine kindly came to Court Cottage and she showed me how to knit toe-up socks in the round on 2 fixed cable needles.  And, she brought me a lovely gift – a skein of beautiful hand-dyed sock yarn of the most exceptional  quality to make my socks with! Sarah – the tutor and friend – is a former colleague of mine whom I met through knitting, when we both worked for Rowan Yarns.  We bonded on a lengthy train journey from Bristol to Yorkshire, over knitting, cup-cakes and picnics.  You just know.  Anyway, she succeeded in teaching me this awesome skill, and it seriously calls this question to mind:  what on earth am I going to do with my vast collection of DPNs now I am 2 fixed cable needle convert? We made tiny socks: and as luck would have it, another friend and all her beautiful children also came by for afternoon tea, so we cast off our socks and got baby Claudia to model them. I was – and still am – smiling to myself at this amazing new way to knit socks.  Now, I am going to start on the yarn that Sarah gave me and knit myself a pair.  I am also going to attempt to add a lace panel to the front/top of the socks, and this will be easier than on 4-needle top-down socks, because you have a top and a bottom, all ready set up.  Who knew?! It’s lucky that Sarah understands completely how disproportionately happy this has made me.  Other happiness inducing stuff includes how lovely the garden is looking, albeit rather wild and un-tamed, with blue and white bells romping about as if they owned the place:    I do toil over the garden but it never comes out manicured, partly because there is too much of it to be that fussy and also, I let the plants have their head.  I am in charge – but only just.  Once, we lived in a big old house in Burnham-on-Sea and the lady next door was Mrs Moore.  She was small, sprightly and a very good gardener.  Our short back gardens faced north, and the houses were very tall, so much of the time, the gardens were is deep shade.  However, we both managed as best we could.  Mrs Moore is no longer with us, but I always remember her very fondly.  Her gardening gloves were worn into holes making them semi-fingerless and when not gardening, she divided her time between reading The Telegraph, walking briskly into the town to shop and look at the sea, and placing many small bets on the horses – she was an excellent gambler and often won. Mrs Moore claimed that the gardening world is divided into two camps:  those who hoe, and those who do not.  If you hoe, she said, you never get all the free plants that will self-seed and sucker or layer themselves.  She is right.  I do hoe, but not often and usually only in the vegetable garden.  I hand-weed, mainly.  Hence the semi-wild nature of the garden.  But, I do gain hundreds of free plants, most of which I pot up and give away or maybe I’ll let them happily do their own thing as they multiply, like these Viola Labrodorica: Once you have one of these, you will never be without them!  They are even more promiscuous than the Hellebore.  I let them self-seed into the gravel paths and paving-cracks, along with their English cousins.