Nepal countdown

“I think I’m going to sign up for the trip to Nepal.”

I can’t believe it’s nearly two years since not so small daughter made her announcement and next weekend, we’ll be waving her off at Manchester airport for two weeks.  She’s going with a group of other students from her year at sixth form college, a couple of teachers and a leader from World Challenge, the organisation they’re travelling with, and it’s going to be amazing.  If you’ve been reading the blog for a long time, you might remember that big daughter went to Peru in 2016 with World Challenge and it was an incredible experience for her – so much so that not so small daughter didn’t want to miss out when the chance came for her to do something similar!

Just like when not so small daughter went to Japan with the Guides last year, World Challenge encourages the students to pay for as much of the trip for themselves as they can.  Not so small daughter has been working in a cafe and selling clothes and other items through Vinted and Ebay to contribute towards her trip, and luckily we’ve been able to borrow some of the items of kit that she’ll need from big daughter so we haven’t had to buy them twice.

My contribution towards the adventure is socks.  Well, what else did you expect?!  Two pairs of knitted socks for walking in …

I started them later than I intended to, and although I was confident that I would get them finished as not so small daughter had chosen the new West Yorkshire Spinners ColourLab DK yarn and DK socks do knit up nice and quickly, there was still that niggle of doubt!

I took them with me to big daughter’s yoga retreat and managed to get a reasonable amount done there during the small amounts of time I had away from the kitchen, and then I had a couple of days where I told myself that I HAD to sit down and get them done so I did – it sounds quite ridiculous when I consider that knitting socks is my job (my real job, not the day job 🤣), but I really struggle to sit and knit during the day because it’s usually something I do in the evenings.  The only way that I can make myself sit and knit is to watch something on the TV but there are strict criteria:

1  Not too factually interesting (otherwise I’m likely to want to look up more facts on my phone);

2  No subtitles (or I get distracted watching the dialogue);

3  Definitely not scary or tense (which isn’t really my thing anyway, but it’s not good for my knitting tension!);

4  Nothing that needs me to watch the screen all the time so that I can keep up with the story (see No 2 for subtitles);

5  Ideally on Netflix which will go straight to the next episode without giving me an opportunity to get up and wander off and then start doing something else (I actually don’t think that’s a good thing about Netflix in general as you could end up watching TV all day and all night, but it does make me sit and knit!).

Honestly, you’d think asking me to sit down and knit was some kind of terrible punishment, but I do feel as if I’m skiving if I do it during the day – it must be because I like it so much!

In case you’re interested, the TV shows that have met my criteria over the last few years have been White Collar, Virgin River, Chesapeake Shores, Suits, Sweet Magnolias, National Geographic documentaries and Midsomer Murders – not necessarily programmes that I would have watched otherwise (apart from Midsomer Murders, I’ve loved that for years), but I’ve quite enjoyed them as I’ve been knitting!

They’ve done the trick too, and I watched the final episode of Suits as I finished off the toes of the first pair of trekking socks …

This colourway is Soul (I keep wanting to write Sole! 🤣) and I’ve used my own Reinforcing Heels, Soles and Toes tutorial to make them more cushioned underneath.  Phew – one pair done!

The second colourway that not so small daughter chose was Jazz …

It’s knitted up completely differently – Sole is gently variegated but Jazz is much more outspoken and definitely wants to be noticed!

These socks are not matching.  They started off matching on the leg but by the time I got to the foot, they were close but not exact.  I’ll be honest, I did start twitching a bit about it and if they had been for me, I would have spent time trying to make sure they were exact, but these socks are for not so small daughter who delights in wearing odd socks and is thrilled that these aren’t quite the same.  Both pairs are knitted using the Soundwaves pattern (free through the QR code on the ball band or you can click here for a PDF download) so they are all the same shape … I wouldn’t be at all surprised if not so small daughter ends up wearing completely mismatched colours and as long as they are comfortable and not on my feet, I don’t mind at all!

I finished the second pair last night so I’m going to give them a soak to get all the dust and cat hairs off them (these have been well-travelled socks!) and then they’re ready to be packed.

My final sock contribution to the Nepal trip is a brand new pattern!  I’ll launch it tomorrow so you’ll be able to find it in the blog shop, on Ravelry and on Payhip, and if you would like to buy a copy we would be very grateful as I’ll be putting all the profits into the Nepal fund to go towards everything we’ve spent so far.

I have realised that I am terrible at sales build-up.  According to sales “law”, I should really have been doing teaser posts and photos for weeks but I haven’t.  I’ve told you they’re coming and I’ve not been organised enough to be dropping hints, so I’ll have to tell you (nearly) everything now and I hope you’ll forgive the non-existent build up!

They’re called Monkey Puzzle Socks, they’re a mosaic pattern and there’s a surprise in the pattern that I hope you’ll like … it certainly made me smile when I first saw it because it took me by surprise too!  Sounds interesting?  I hope you think so – and I’ll see you tomorrow with the pattern post!