Socks, leaves and chocolate biscuits

Where DOES the time go?  It’s Monday morning and I am sure it was only Saturday about two minutes ago.  You’d think that the extra hour in bed that we got yesterday morning as the clocks went back and British Summer Time ended would make all the difference, but all it did was confuse the dog who doesn’t tell the time and didn’t understand why his meal times have changed.  I am a bit worried about how it’s going to go from now on as he thinks that it’s supper time as soon as it goes dark so when we get to dark nights at 4.30pm,  he’s going to be ready for his bed and demanding his bedtime biscuit several hours too early! 🙂

It’s definitely going to feel like autumn now the clocks have gone back.  The trees have been looking fabulous with the leaves changing to their autumn colours, and when the sun has shone on them (we have actually seen the sun once or twice recently), they look magical.

I took these two photos of our acer tree in the garden a few days apart and you can see how quickly the leaves have turned …

There have been countless skeins of geese flying overhead during the past week too.  They’re so noisy!  I wonder what they’re saying to each other as they constantly rearrange their flying positions?  I know that they take it in turns to be at the front because it’s harder work than flying behind in the slipstream, but I wonder if they are counting to make sure they’re all still there, or calling instructions about who’s next at the front, or even discussing what they can see so far below, or what they might like for dinner when they get to where they’re going?

I tell you what, they don’t half fly at some speed!  I heard what sounded like a big flock of them pass across our house so I ran outside to see if I could get a photo, and I only just caught them!  There were so many of them they were in two skeins, and the noise was unbelievable considering they were so high above me.

Back indoors, there has been sock progress.  I promised you last week that I’d show you the pair of Emergency Socks* that I finished for myself and here they are …

This yarn is a colourway called Christine’s Camassia, hand-dyed by Red Squirrel and Dune, and the pattern is my Basic 4ply Socks pattern.  If you’re new to adding in contrasts for cuffs, heels and toes, you can find a tutorial to help here, and you’ll see that I’ve worked the toes in heel stitch – that’s because I’ve got pokey toes so I always do this with my socks.  I work a few extra rounds on the foot as heel stitch fabric is shorter than ordinary knitted fabric because of the slip stitches.  You can find my tutorial for reinforcing soles, heels and toes here.

There’s a new pair of Emergency Socks on the needles, and if I tell you that there’s only one person in the world that I will knit black socks for, you will know that they’re for my husband.  You can see that already they’re not entirely black as there are cat hairs stuck to the yarn (this is why I pull from the centre of the ball – it does stop quite so many hairs being knitted in!), and fortunately he likes coloured heels and toes so I get a break from the black!  I knit short row heels with his socks so they look more like bought socks; they’re really not my favourite type of heel but my husband really loves his “proper” socks so I make an exception for him 🙂

I’d knit them for my girls too if they really wanted them, of couse, but I think they’d rather have bright socks which is a relief!

There was something to celebrate last week when I finally finished the Christmas socks that I had to give IOUs for last Christmas.  Oh.My.Goodness, I really started to think that I would never get them done!  I wanted both pairs to be finished so that I could gift them together and I’ve got to tell you, missing the deadline of Christmas made it so much harder to get them done because the urgency has passed and I had other things that I needed to start knitting instead.

Here they are, finally blocking on the Aga …

and now I hope you’ll indulge me in a few photos because I am beyond delighted to have passed these on to their new owners (big daughter and I spent the day with not so small daughter in her university city on Saturday and these socks came with us), and I don’t plan on knitting any more of this pattern in the near future 🙂

The yarns that I used are West Yorkshire Spinners Signature 4ply in Summer Sunset (pinks) and Winter Icicle (blues) – both Winwick Mum yarns – with contrasts of Milk Bottle and Licquorice.  The pattern is a free one called Film Reel Socks on Ravelry.

Yes, more short row heels – I think that’s another reason why they’ve taken me so long! 🤣  Despite being so belated, they are still Christmas presents so I made a point of wrapping them up properly.  I used the sock wrap labels from my new Christmas Gift Socks Knitting Guide …

and I went into the attic to get the Christmas wrapping paper (the attic is still a work in progress) so that I could make sure they looked like the proper presents that they are.

Here’s not so small daughter with her pair on her feet.  I think this is the first time I have ever deliberately knitted mis-matched socks and I’ll be honest, it was an accident as I am usually very careful about matching the socks I knit, but she loves odd socks so she is delighted with them.

Big daughter and I were laden with bags on our way to see not so small daughter at the weekend.  We travelled by train with vitamin sprays, tights for a Hallowe’en costume, some post, a fresh loaf of bread, leek and potato soup (a special request from when not so small daughter was poorly the other week and just really wanted soup from home) and chocolate biscuits which I baked after seeing an Instagram post by Nancy Birtwhistle.  She’s a previous winner of the Great British Bake Off and now champions green cleaning and home baking – I’m a big fan!

Her post was in response to a BBC article that McVities Penguin and Club biscuits can no longer because officially called chocolate biscuits as they are made with chocolate flavouring rather than real chocolate (they say that cocoa beans are too expensive now), and she posted a recipe for her own chocolate biscuits that looked easy to make.

Here are mine just about to go into oven.  I thought that we’d have squirrel biscuits instead of penguin ones, but that’s only because I don’t have a penguin cutter – maybe I need to track one down!  I did take some “after” photos too but put them on my Instagram stories and now they’ve disappeared forever so I can’t show you – next time, I’ll remember to take the photo first rather than through the app.

Anyway, I can tell you that they are really good and very easy to make.  Mine might be a bit thick as the biscuit is more cake-like than crunchy, but that didn’t stop us eating them!  If you’re on Instagram you’ll be able to find the post and the recipe; if not, this recipe on Nancy’s website for mini bourbon hearts looks pretty similar.

And that’s me done for today.  I like to keep us all on our toes at the moment by never quite knowing when a blog post is going to be ready (yep, sometimes it’s a surprise to me too!),  but it’s nearly the end of the month so there will be a Monthly Musing before then – and then it’s November!  Goodness, the year is certainly passing by a-pace!

Share this gorgeous sunset with me, seen whilst out with the dog the other evening, and I’ll see you again soon xx

* Emergency Socks – sock knitting that you can carry about with you go out in the car or have to wait somewhere.  The Basic 4ply Socks pattern and a ball of self-striping yarn is the perfect combination!