PJ Day socks

I'm thrilled to be able to share my latest sock pattern with you. PJ Day socks were designed for those days when you want to stay in your pyjamas ALL day, cosied up on the sofa with a mug of hot chocolate (complete with cream and marshmallows obvs!), a soft blanket to snuggle into and your favourite film on TV. Mine is Sleepless in Seattle, by the way - what's yours?

The pattern is a 4 row repeat of a knit and purl stitch pattern that is not only easy to memorise, but knits up nice and fast, creating a stretchy fabric that hugs your foot. The socks are knit top down, with a heel flap and the wedge toe is joined using kitchener stitch. I used a skein of Norah George Super Sock yarn in the Muted Rainbow colourway for mine, but any sock yarn will work. You can buy a copy of the pattern from my Ravelry pattern store here, and if you use the code 'pjday', you'll get 25% off until the end of June. You've not got long! If you aren't able to use Ravelry, please email me - josiekitten123 at gmail.com and I will do my best to help you. I'm looking for an alternative place to sell my patterns and will let you know when I've got something set up. I am donating all proceeds from the sale of all my patterns to my fundraising for Myositis UK. I hope you like the pattern and happy knitting! xxx

 

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Sunday's raffle brings me to half way through this year of fundraising. I can't quite believe it, time is whizzing by. I still have lots of amazing prizes to give away throughout the remainder of 2021 and I have some truly incredible prizes to finish the year with a bang! I'm really excited about these and cannot wait to share them with you! (But not for a while yet as various bits and bobs are still getting sorted out!)

This week's prize has a purple theme and I love it! If you've been following me for a while, you'll know that purple is my favourite colour. I gathered together some donations and also had a rummage in my stash to find something nice for you. The prize includes a gorgeous, almost iridescent skein of Yarn Yarn Falkland merino wool which has been donated by an Instagram friend Meliryth. Shannon from Blue Fern Yarns has donated a skein of her superwash merino nylon sock yarn in the Wisteria colourway and it's so pretty. To go with those, there are two skeins of Malabrigo merino lace yarn in the Purple Mystery colourway - the yarn is a soft as butter! There is also a skein of Artesano Hummingbird yarn which is 100% alpaca. Mrs Lamb has donated a fun project bag with 'All you need is yarn and gin' printed on it! There is a cute pin badge and a set of 5 purple stitch markers and a yarny postcard from Lana Bou. Last but not least, there is a purple dpn case which has been donated by Ellie over at Craft House Magic. Thank you so much to everyone who has generously donated a prize.

I'm sure that you know the score by now, but I'll tell you how to enter anyway! You have a chance to win all these gorgeous prizes for a minimum donation of £2! Are you tempted to try your luck? Here's everything you need to know. This giveaway will run this coming Sunday 27th June, closing at 23:55. To enter, go to my JustGiving page here and buy your virtual raffle tickets by donating £2 or more. £2 gets you 2 tickets, £3 gets you 3 tickets, £5 gets you 5 tickets and so on. The more you donate, the greater your chance of winning. You will need to leave your Instagram or Ravelry name, or tick the box to share your email address with me when you make your donation, so that I can contact you if you are the winner. This is really important as I have no way of knowing who you are otherwise. Each week, I still get donations where no name or email is left, so if that person's number comes up in the random number generator, I have no idea who it is! All your donations go the Myositis UK to help fund research into this incurable muscle disease, so thank you from the bottom of my heart for all your support. Every single donation is important. Our next big milestone to pass is £17,500. Can we do it this weekend?! Thank you and stay safe! xxx

The Rainbow 'Socks of Doom' are done!

My May Rainbow 'Socks of Doom' are done and I have never been so pleased to finish a project in my life! You may remember I blogged about them a while back. They were knitted from a sock blank which although gorgeous to look at, I found a nightmare to knit as the yarn was so crinkly. The knitted fabric was very uneven and I hadn't spotted a dropped stitch until I was about to start the heel flap. A few rather rude words may well have been muttered at that point! I frogged the offending sock and put it into time out for a while. When I picked them up again last week, I decided that I didn't like the colour change down the foot that was the result of knitting a heel flap and gusset, so I frogged the other sock back to the start of the heel too. I knit long tubes and decreased for the toes before adding afterthought heels and I'm much happier now with the yarn gradient. I left them to soak for a long time, hoping that the water would help the crinkly fibres to relax. The finished socks do look neater, but still not as neat as if I'd used yarn from a skein. I hope that once they have been worn and washed a few times, they'll look more even. I can't say that I'm in a hurry to knit from a sock blank again, but if I did, I'd definitely wind it into a skein first and soak it to get it straight before knitting it. My June socks are finished too. I'll be sharing photos soon and hopefully a new pattern too. Keep watching! xxx

The sock blank was a beautiful two stranded tube that I bought from Mothy and the Squid. 

It caused me problems from the word go because the stitches in the tube had been split so that I couldn't unwind it from the end I'd started knitting from. So I had to go to the other end, cut the yarn and wind into two separate balls of yarn. Flo's assistance was much appreciated of  course!

I used stitch markers down the sock tube to keep count of the rows and couldn't wait to finish!

They had a lovely long bath in some warm water with a sachet of Soak in it.

Ta dah! Finished socks! The knitted fabric is a lot neater after blocking, but there is still room for improvement!

Love these matchy-matchy heels!

They are now in my sock drawer to be worn once the weather gets cooler.

 

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I've got a super-fun prize for you this week. My Instagram friend Ann donated a copy of the book 'Knitting with your Leftovers' so I thought it would be rather nice to put together lots of different yarns so that the winner can have fun making lots of the projects from the book. (You could even use it to get ahead with gift knitting - it's only 6 months until Christmas!)

As well as the book, the prize includes a ball of each of the new colourways of Stylecraft Special DK yarn. Another Instagram friend, Hannah, has donated two balls of Deramores merino DK yarn, as well a ball of Stylecraft Merry Go Round and another ball of Special DK. Another Instagram friend Annette has donated two balls of King Cole Opium yarn which has a lovely silky feel to it. Sue from Diss Wool and Craft Shop has donated a gorgeous ball of Katia lace yarn. My fellow Stylecraft Blogstar Julia who is Hand Knitted Things has donated a ball each of Adriafil Zebrino and Knitcol yarns, as well as two balls of Stylecraft Batik Elements, a ball of Bellissima Chunky, a ball of Special Chunky and a ball of Special Aran. There are also three balls of Yarn Stories yarn. If I've counted correctly, that's 20 balls of yarn! Of course you'll need a bag to keep them in, so there is a Stylecraft tote bag, a key ring and some gift tags, and a sweet stitch marker from Hannah Daisy Crochet. Thank you to everyone who has donated a prize in this bumper bundle! 

I'm sure that you know the score by now, but I'll tell you how to enter anyway! You have a chance to win all these gorgeous prizes for a minimum donation of £2! Are you tempted to try your luck? Here's everything you need to know. This giveaway will run this coming Sunday 20th June, closing at 23:55. To enter, go to my JustGiving page here and buy your virtual raffle tickets by donating £2 or more. £2 gets you 2 tickets, £3 gets you 3 tickets, £5 gets you 5 tickets and so on. The more you donate, the greater your chance of winning. You will need to leave your Instagram or Ravelry name, or tick the box to share your email address with me when you make your donation, so that I can contact you if you are the winner. This is really important as I have no way of knowing who you are otherwise. Each week, I still get donations where no name or email is left, so if that person's number comes up in the random number generator, I have no idea who it is! All your donations go the Myositis UK to help fund research into this incurable muscle disease, so thank you from the bottom of my heart for all your support. Every single donation is important. Thank you and stay safe! xxx

Dyeing at home

I had a lovely time on Saturday morning. I had seen on Instagram that Laura from Adventures in Yarncraft was holding a 'Dye at Home' yarn dyeing workshop via Zoom so thought it would be fun to give it a go. I received my kit in the post in plenty of time. It included two foil trays for dyeing the yarn, two skeins of merino yarn, 4 pots of acid dyes, a pot of citric acid, pots for mixing dyes, spoons, gloves and a mask. Laura asked us to soak our yarn prior to the start of the workshop, so that we could get on with the dyeing nice and quickly. We were instructed on the safety aspects - wear a mask when the pots of dye are open is the most important, and then Laura showed us how to go about dyeing a skein.

It was inevitable that one of my skeins was going to be purple! I mixed some of the Amethyst and Peacock Blue dye powders together in hot water and was very happy with the colour they produced. The dye pot was topped up with cold water before pouring it into the foil tray. More water was added to make sure that the dye bath was deep enough. The skein of yarn was then added to the tray and moved about in the dye to ensure that the yarn took up the dye as evenly as possible. Then citric acid was sprinkled into the dye bath and mixed in before putting the tray into a warm oven for about 30 minutes.

You can see how the dye gets taken up by the yarn and the remaining liquid is clear. I guess that if you were using a really saturated colour, there might be some residue still in the water. While this skein was 'cooking' in the oven, we made a start on the second skein. For this one, we were learning how to dye a variegated skein so mixed up three colours. I went for a teal blue shade, a fresh green and a yellow-green mix. The skein was put into the foil tray and the different pots of dye were poured over different areas of the yarn. Despite the fact that I had washed my hands (in the gloves), when I picked up the skein, I managed to get some specks of purple dye on it! So I added a tiny bit more purple to various points on the skein to hopefully disguise my error! I think that I need to add some more purple now that the skein is dry so that it's a bit more obvious, but I am waiting a few days to decide.

While the second skein was 'cooking', I removed a lot of the water from the tray with the purple skein in it. We were going to add some speckles and the yarn needs to be drier so that the speckles of dye powder don't spread out too much. I decided to add some black speckles followed by some blue and amethyst ones. Laura suggested that we mixed a tiny bit of dye powder with some citric acid to encourage the dye to set quickly. In a couple of places, my yarn was a little bit too wet so the speckles spread a bit more than I wanted, but on the whole, I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. The speckled yarn went back into the oven so that the heat could work its magic. Once cool, both skeins were rinsed thoroughly in room temperature water and then hung to dry outside.

The following day, I twisted the yarn into skeins so that I could admire it! I love the purple skein in particular.

The green skein is pretty too, but I do think it needs a few more splashes of purple. They are still a bit sparse and look like they got there by accident! (Which of course they did!) What do you think? Should I add more purple or just leave it as it is?

I loved dyeing the yarn and would like to dye more, just for myself or as presents for fellow yarn lovers. Not that I need another creative rabbit hole to disappear down of course! If you are interested in having a go yourself, I think that Laura is planning to hold more dye workshops via Zoom. There were 15 of us in the workshop and it was absolutely fine as Laura explained and demonstrated everything so clearly. Thank you Laura! As the skeins are both DK weight, I'm thinking that they will become hats or cowls. The yarn is lovely and plump and I think it will have a gorgeous stitch definition. Which do you prefer? And what would you knit with them? Let me know in the comments. Stay safe and chat again soon. xxx

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I've got some gorgeous things for you in this week's prize. Some beautiful shades to help you keep cool. The prize includes a set of 12 miniskeins which have been dyed and donated by Beth who runs Beehive Yarns. This set is sold out on Beth's website so I feel very honoured that Beth chose to share a set with you. Beth has also donated a set of hexagonal stitchmarkers and a bee progress keeper. Julie from Suffolk Socks has donated a zipped project bag and a pin badge. I love how Julie's sense of humour rolls over onto her products! Sue from Diss Wool and Craft shop has donated a ball of Regia striping yarn in wonderful shades of blue. It reminds me of a swimming pool! There are three balls of Yarn Stories 4ply merino yarn and a knitter's notebook, perfect for keeping in your project bag! Thank to everyone who has donated a prize.

I'm sure that you know the score by now, but I'll tell you how to enter anyway! You have a chance to win all these gorgeous prizes for a minimum donation of £2! Are you tempted to try your luck? Here's everything you need to know. This giveaway will run this coming Sunday 13th June, closing at 23:55. To enter, go to my JustGiving page here and buy your virtual raffle tickets by donating £2 or more. £2 gets you 2 tickets, £3 gets you 3 tickets, £5 gets you 5 tickets and so on. The more you donate, the greater your chance of winning. You will need to leave your Instagram or Ravelry name, or tick the box to share your email address with me when you make your donation, so that I can contact you if you are the winner. This is really important as I have no way of knowing who you are otherwise. Each week, I still get donations where no name or email is left, so if that person's number comes up in the random number generator, I have no idea who it is! All your donations go the Myositis UK to help fund research into this incurable muscle disease, so thank you from the bottom of my heart for all your support. Every single donation is important. Thank you and stay safe! xxx