Grumpy knitter

It's not often that knitting makes me grumpy. It's generally my 'feel-good-me-time'. But my May rainbow socks are proving rather tiresome, to say the least. The yarn has been sat in deepest stash for some years, but when I decided to knit a year of rainbow socks, it felt like the perfect opportunity to use it. The yarn, from Mothy and the Squid, is a glorious rainbow of colour in a knitted sock blank. I haven't knitted from a sock blank before (where the yarn is already knitted up, dyed and then you unravel it to knit it) and this one was more complicated as the sock blank was actually made up of two strands that had been knitted up into a long and fairly narrow tube. It came with a little label attached to show which end to start unravelling from, and I decided that I would knit two at a time socks, but on separate circular needles as I would be unravelling both strands at the same time. Things soon went pear-shaped when I discovered that a couple of stitches had split the yarns so that it was impossible to carry on knitting without cutting the yarn and rejoining it. So I decided to go to the other end of the tube, cut the yarn at the halfway point and then wind two balls. Flo helped me with this!

Not long after starting to knit, I decided that I. Do. Not. Like. Knitting. With. Crinkly. Yarn. Not one little bit! It's impossible to get a neat knitted fabric with all the crinkles. I am just hoping that with a long soak and blocking that this issue will resolve itself. After all, the knitted tube looks perfectly fine, doesn't it? 

I think that if I was going to knit from a sock blank again, I'd unravel it, skein it up and soak it so it was straight to start off with. But that does seem like an awful lot of work for something that in theory should be very simple. I'm knitting on them in fits and starts (and didn't have any motivation to get them finished by the end of May!) and in the meantime, have cast on another pair of socks in gorgeously smooth and crinkle-free yarn. This is from Laura, who runs Bumbling Yarns and was her self-striping sock yarn from last month's club. I don't have a monthly membership, but when I saw her post a photo of the yarn on Instagram, I had a bad case of 'the wanties'! Laura also makes the wonderful Crafter's Balm which is very soothing for dry skin. The colours remind me of those Fruit Salad chewy sweets of my childhood! It's knitting up a dream. I'm going to knit short row heels in the pink contrast miniskein and pink toes too!

I'm going to push myself to try and finish the rainbow socks over the weekend, and I will definitely be picking out a lovely smooth yarn for my next socks! Stay safe and catch up soon. xxx