The English Armchair Abroad

Blocking Socks

OK, I'm going to bore you to death but hopefully it will be brief!

As you know by now I've become a somewhat obsessive knitter of socks. Normally they come off the needles and go straight onto my feet, but yesterday I finished a pair that are a gift for a friend and I decided I would block them to make them look more professional. 

Blocking basically means wetting and pinning into shape a newly knit item.  When it's dry it will be transformed.  For socks the process is slightly different but much easier.  It involves a pair of Sock Blockers which are either thin wood or hard plastic cut into the shape of a flat sock.  They come in various sizes and you can make your own easily enough. 

To illustrate the difference blocking makes I took the following photos.  In order they are the two socks freshly knitted - the one on the right has been on the blocker whilst I knitted the second one (which is pictured fresh off the needles);  however, it was not wet so it hasn't really changed shape. 

The second photo is after they were put on the blockers wet and left to dry overnight.  Different?  I'll say!

I wish I'd taken a close up but you can see the different shape. 

UPHOLSTERY COURSE STARTING 23 FEBRUARY 2009

I have been asked to do a course starting on Monday 23 February for five days.  I still have places available and if you are interested please post a comment - I will get straight back to you!

Accommodation and meals are available.
 

Work is interfering with knitting! Hurray!

It  doesn't take much thought to work out that when times are hard chairs don't need to be reupholstered.  Anyway, that old armchair in the corner is so comfy why would anyone want to have it reupholstered - just throw an old rug over it to hide the worn patches and the nail varnish (note to self:  ban everyone from applying nail varnish on upholstered furniture).

As a result my work load has gone down a bit - actually it's all but disappeared.  You might have noticed that I've clearly got a bit (!) of time at the moment to knit and spin.  Socks are being produced at a rapid rate.  Bearing in mind that I'd never considered knitting socks until late last year, you might think I'm a bit of a fanatic.  Well, why deny it?  I'm having enormous fun buying unusual wool, usually off ebay, and then wearing the resulting socks a few days later.  It's also a way to keep warm - I can sit next to the fire in the kitchen which during the freezing cold spell a couple of weeks ago was the only place to be in this house unless you actually want to have a violet/blue complexion.

So although I complained ALL last year about one client who kept changing his mind (and her mind - it's a husband and wife decision) about the choice of fabric;  who asked FOUR TIMES for the measurements and then asked why they kept changing (because his current fabric idea had a pattern etc), I have to admit that I am now equally peeved because he has finally delivered the fabric and I no longer have an excuse not to get on with the chair.  In other words...I CAN'T KNIT!

The good news in all this pathetic drivvle is that the chair is not complicated and is proving quite quick to work on.  The bad news is that the client bought the fabric but didn't remember (or couldn't make up his mind perhaps) to buy the braid that I will need to finish it with.  For some reason people think that this can be done by me quite easily but when you are buying 10 metres of braid for a minimum price of 10euros/metre it seems to me that I could quite easily have a complaint on my hands further down the line - when I present the bill for example!

I mustn't complain though (really?!).  There is a second, matching, chair to come from the same client and he has ALREADY BOUGHT THE FABRIC - although not the braid - and any work that comes in at the moment is good news.  Also, it's warmed up so much that who would want to be sitting by the fire knitting?  (Er, do I have to answer that?)

In the meantime feast your eyes on my latest homespun wool:

 

AND:  Look what the broody chicken suddenly produced:

I think he should be called Ranulph (after Ranulph Fiennes, Arctic Explorer) as he has survived the Arctic temperatures - indeed he was born in them!