A quiet April

Longer than a month since I last posted? Disgraceful.

Truth is, I've not done a lot bead-wise. I made some more Petalplosions in a pale plum colour (the ones pictured above) but then I ran out of propane just before the long Easter weekend and FloGas didn't deliver a new canister until last week. I do miss their local dealer service where you could get next day delivery; now it all goes through a central call centre system and everything takes ages.

So I've been knitting socks. Loads of them. So many socks I've lost count. I have a stack of them on the table next to me, all washed and blocked, waiting for their photos to be taken.

I made a pair of coral-coloured socks for my littlest sister's birthday last month.

The pattern is Harriet by Summer Lee from her superb book The Sock Project and the yarn is Cascade Heritage in 5750 Living Coral. I knitted a pair the same but in a linen beige colour for my other sister but I forgot to photograph those ones.

I got a bit obsessed knitting striped socks for a bit. I've only photographed one pair of those - the others are on the aforementioned sock stack.

These ones are no particular pattern, just a generic cuff down sock in five row stripes.

Nigel helping with photography

These were knitted with Yarnsmiths Merino Sock in 098 Crimson and 223 Spearmint. I'm really impressed with this yarn. It's very soft and comes in a wide range of colours. I like it a lot!

What else have I been doing? I went to London last month to watch my niece, brother-in-law and my niece's cousin run the London Landmarks half marathon. My niece Robyn (long-term readers will be shocked to realise that she's now twenty years old) only started running at the start of the year so she did really well to run a half in just over three hours, bless her. I'm so proud of her! I hadn't been for a run since February but after seeing Robyn do so brilliantly I was inspired to get back to it and now I'm out there three times a week plodding along like a sweaty, beetroot-faced wombat but I'm loving it.

I'm still working my way through The X Files and Chris is finding it hilarious that I'm thirty years late to it. It's so good! 

I think that's about all for now. I've just added 'photograph sock stack socks' to my to-do list so I'll be back soon with some of those and hopefully some beads too now that my torch has fuel again.

More Petalplosions

I've received really great feedback about the Petalplosions (thank you!) so I've made another batch of them. They can be purchased as pairs of beads and also as earrings.

French earwires

Leverback earwires

The earrings come with French earwires as standard but a leverback upgrade is available.

Please click here to visit my shop.

Spring zing

I've been making more petal beads. The photographs don't show off their depth very well so these are definite better-in-real-life beads.

I thought I'd try combining the petals with an implosion and ta-da! Petalplosions!

I love these. Yellow implosion centres, white layered petals and a touch of bright green for a bit of springtime zing.

All of the beads pictured are currently available as pairs over in my shop.

In non-bead news, I think I'm just about used to my varifocals now. I went and had a little frame adjustment which made a big difference so hurrah for that. I had to have a chipped and cracked tooth fixed with a composite filling on Thursday and now I'm getting used to a slightly new bite. I'm also getting over some kind of lurgy that I caught from Chris. It's most odd - just a really bad cough and a slightly sore throat with a general feeling of headachy worn-out-ness. Not really a cold, possibly mild Covid? Whatever, the cough is no longer making me sound like a honking goose so that's a bonus. Honestly, eyes, teeth, cough lurg... I'm falling apart here.

Anyway, I finished my green socks:

These are Summer Lee's August Colorwork Cuff Club pattern. They're knitted in Drops Nord in shades 10 and 01.

It's such a beautiful day here. It's fresh and a little chilly but the sun is shining, the bumble bees are bumbling about and the birds are chirping. Leaves are unfurling everywhere and the cherry trees are blossoming all over the place.

This is my favourite local tree. If you stand underneath it all you can hear are umpteen bees and pollinators buzzing amongst its flowers. It's so nice to just take a moment and listen to them going about their business.

I hope the sun is shining wherever you are. Have a lovely day and I'll speak to you soon.

A good bead day

You know I said in my last post I was going through my bead archives? The photo above is from May 2014 and I looked at these petal beads for ages, trying to remember how I made them. They're not like my 'scales' beads which are just layers of stacked dots; these have more depth to them.

Yesterday I decided to try and let my hands remember how they were made, as opposed to my brain. Honestly, muscle memory never fails to amaze me. How can you make a few beads eleven years ago and think you've forgotten the method you used for them, yet your hands have remembered? As soon as the tiny little thing I thought I'd forgotten clicked into place, I was away.

Petals V2.0

I added an extra layer of small petals to make them a bit different and although these reminder beads are made in just three colours - clear, periwinkle blue and light violet - I can picture these in multiple colours within one bead. What is beyond me is why I opted for bands of seven petals. When it comes to placing dots on beads, four is easy, five is tricky but okay, six is typical, eight is pretty simple, but why did I choose seven for these? It's the same with my polka dots; those have bands of nine dots. When it comes to drawing geometric shapes with a compass and ruler (which I have done lots of) heptagons and nonagons are the bit-more-complex ones to execute. I seem to have an in-built need to make life complicated for myself.

But yes, what is important is that I'm making progress on the bead front. I really enjoyed my shed time yesterday. I hit play on my massive Weezer playlist and got totally lost in glass and music and I haven't felt that way for a long while. Here's hoping I'm starting to crawl out of my beady misery hole.

In sock news...

In the evenings I have a spare hour or so before getting the dinner ready in which I knit and watch telly. Last month I was doing the trawling-through-streaming-services thing, looking for a series I'd not seen before for my pre-dinner knitting television and I decided to try The X-Files. I never watched it in the 90s and it's always seemed like a lot of TV show to catch up with but I decided to dive in anyway and oh my word, I love it.

I am over thirty years late to this but goodness me, Fox Mulder is a huge bit of alright, isn't he? (Especially in his season one specs. And his season two sunglasses.) I'm surprised by how much some of the episodes have freaked me out (Tooms, possessed children, general aliens-coming-to-Earth stuff) but I am thoroughly enjoying it.

When I happened upon Charlotte Stone's The Truth is Out There socks pattern a couple of weeks ago I knew I had to knit them.

These were made with Opal Uni 4 Ply in shades 2619 Black and 2011 Neon Green.

And here are the socks I'm currently working on. These are Summer Lee's August Colorwork Cuff Club pattern. I think they're very fitting to post today seeing as it's the first day of spring. 

I adore this mossy green. The yarn is Drops Nord which is an alpaca and wool mix.

Right, shed. Let's see if I've got any more petal power in me...

See you later!