Progress!

Woohoo!  These are the proof copies of my new Project Super Socks notebook which went out for road-testing and now, with all the feedback in, the PDF has gone to the printers so that the final version can be printed up.  Progress indeed … I love it when an idea in your head starts to come to life!

You can see from this photo that the book is called Project Super Socks (because it’s part of the Super Socks series), but also “Master Plan” and there’s a space to write your name – I used to love books that you could claim as your very own when I was little, but more than that, I wanted to celebrate the skills that we have as knitters and create something that is indeed our master plan, our blueprints for knitting socks for anybody that we choose to knit for.  I don’t think we should ever underestimate the skill involved in knitting socks (or anything, really).  We are fluent in another language (if you don’t believe me, ask any non-knitter to tell you what a pattern means and you’ll see exactly what I mean), we have excellent hand eye co-ordination, we have above-average dexterity with our hands, we have the ability to see a finished project in our mind’s eye and we are able to choose styles and colours based on what we know about someone – and that includes ourselves; you never knit something for yourself that you don’t think will suit or you don’t like the colour, do you?

If that’s not a skill-set to celebrate, I don’t know what is!  Far too often, I hear of people who are sad that others don’t see their knitting as something of value, but I want you to know that I see it, and I have a created a book to remind you that whatever others think, I think you’re amazing ❤️

It’s going to be a couple of weeks before the Project Super Socks books are ready to go.  I’m looking at a launch date of early December but I’ll be able to let you know the exact date for sure soon.

I realised when I was looking through my photos that I hadn’t shown you the yarn that I bought from Purl and Jane when I was in Skipton the other week.  Ooh, I can’t stop with the purple! 💜

I don’t really know what I’m going to do with it but there were just two balls of it in the discount basket and I couldn’t leave them there.  I’m thinking of some fingerless mitts for when it gets colder – it’s chunky yarn so I could adapt my Split Mittens pattern and just carry on knitting instead of making the split and closing in the top.  It feels unlikely that I’d need them at the moment as it still feels warm for November, but I may be glad of them as the winter moves on so it makes sense to get started now – and I have just finished a pair of socks!  I also need to get a new pair of Emergency Socks on the needles so that’s something that I could think about this weekend.

We’ve had a couple of much nicer days recently – not the crisp, sunny days with the sun shining through the branches onto the colours of the fallen leaves that you like to imagine in autumn, but dry days at least which have made walking much more pleasant.

I loved the way the swans were swimming in a stately line.  That’s Mr or Mrs Swan in the front followed by cygnets that look fully grown apart from some last grey feathers.  I think it’s some time in January when they leave – one day they’re there with Mr and Mrs Swan, the next they’ve gone to find their own patch of water – so it won’t be long before Mr and Mrs Swan are empty nesters and ready for a new brood in the spring.

I finally got round to mending the cat scratching post this week.  It hadn’t occurred to me that you could do that until I was looking for something online and saw that you could buy sisal rope exactly for that purpose.  Hattie and Astrid have been big fans of the scratching post right from being tiny (our other cats wouldn’t touch it, preferring instead the carpet on the stairs, the piano stool and the curtains) but since the thinner paler rope started to turn into fluff and not be much use for keeping claws in check, they’ve been more interested in the door frames and the stair carpet instead.  It was time to do something about it!

As you can see, Astrid is helping.  Or more truthfully, rolling about on top of the cat tree swiping at the hanging ball and my hands and rocking it alarmingly whilst I was trying to wrap the sisal around it.  When I bought the rope (paid link), the upsell was a hot glue gun but I knew that not so small daughter had one of those so I didn’t get one, although it was useful to know that’s what people had used to stick the rope to the tree!

It turned out that whilst not so small daughter did have a hot glue gun, she’d used it extensively for all kinds of creative things and there was only a little bit of glue left.  I’ve never used one before and boy, it doesn’t half go through the glue stick quickly!  I ran out well before the end; just about where I am there, in fact, so I decided to risk wrapping it tightly and hoping for the best.  I thought that as long as I made sure the end was secure, there wasn’t anywhere for the rope to go so it should be OK.  I asked the supervisor what she thought, but she was too busy waving her paws in the air.

This is what it looked like when I’d finished.  I’m very pleased with that!

Apologies for the fuzzy photo, it was quite late at night and I couldn’t get a decent photo without a shadow.

Anyway, hopefully you can see the general idea of what I’ve done, and I’m delighted that I’ve got enough rope left over for more repairs another day, and it’s cost me far less than it would have done to replace the whole thing.  It lives in the utility room where the cats and the dog sleep and eat, and the cats use it to bounce off onto the working top to get to their food dishes and beds (all high up because otherwise, the dog would help himself) – it’s not too big to fit in a small space and now that I’ve repaired the rope, there’s still plenty of life left in it.  I do like being able to repair something!  The cats seem to be happy that it’s back in use again now as vigorous scratching usually results in the tree being bashed against the radiator and we’re hearing a lot of that again!

I hope you’re having a lovely Saturday, whatever you’re up to.  I’m going to go and have a root through my stash now to see what I can use for my next pair of Emergency Socks, and I’ll show you what I’ve found next time!