WIP: Well Heeled And New Materials.

Knitting a short row heel (or toe) is a perfect little pick-me-up activity. It’s almost like a miniature workout where you don’t have to move from your seat. You start off quite lazily,warming up by knitting long rows punctuated only occasionally by the turn, then after a while the points at which you turn get more and more frequent until you reach the shortest of rows and you are turning quite fast now before turning again and finding a slightly longer row before stopping, pausing, turning again, now less frequently as your rows get longer and longer in the warm down until the longest of rows and then relax, your heel is complete.

I’ve knit these socks quite short in the leg as the colours are very spring/summery, a time of year that rarely requires longer woollen socks, though the could of course be knit to any length.

My other current work in progress is a little something to decorate the walls. The living room still looks a little bare sometimes, so I am cross stitching a little decorative bit of geek art to adorn one of the walls (we are leaving the longest wall bare because it does make the room look ever so huge (at first it looked too huge, but now that we have a giant dining table it seems like a lovely little feature of its own – the bare wall).

I am, for the first time, using a  piece of evenweave for this project. i have always stitched on aida before now, simply because it is what has been available to me. There is no doubt that the evenweave just looks so much nicer for a project like this, but it is a little fiddly, first because I am using quite a large piece for this (10×12″ rather than the tiny little motifs I usually work) and the relative fluidity of the fabric after being used to fairy sturdy, stiff aida. I think this is a time when an embroidery hoop would probably come in useful, but as I don’t have one I have resorted to rolling up one of the sides and holding it in place with a few miniature clips whilst I work, just for easy access whilst I sew. It’s not entirely comfortable, but as I form my stitches by taking the needle down into the fabric and back up through the fabric in one step it’s not totally unmanageable either, and it will be worth it once it is up on the wall.