Blogtober 2024 : Day 6

It’s Sunday, and I hope you are having a lovely weekend!

Thank you for spending some of it reading my blog posts – I’m glad you enjoyed yesterday’s about rediscovering knits from Octobers gone by, and thank you for your comments too.  Please don’t worry if you don’t see your comment come up immediately on the blog – in between shutting my computer down yesterday and opening it up today, there were 120 comments held for moderation and only 5 of those were from real people!  I get so much spam on the blog and always more when I publish a new post so I would rather that the software held more back so that I can check them first than let everything through (none of us need to be reading dodgy comments about buying questionable cryptocurrency, letting someone you’ve never heard of build your website, getting fruity with online “friends” or opening new bank accounts if only we would send a small fortune to get it started!).  Anyway, please be assured that I do check my comments very frequently and I read them all (which is how I know about said spam) and it’s always lovely to hear from you! 🙂

I wasn’t sure whether to carry on with my knits-through-the-years post or chat about something else, but I like the idea of these posts being together and I think there may be two more so that I don’t overwhelm any of us with photos – that’s OK as there are 25 days to go in October so you’ll get plenty of my other ramblings as we go along!

Heading back into my archives then … we’re up to October 2017.  October 2017 was a busy month!  There’s a Yarndale round up, my first Christmas sock pattern for West Yorkshire Spinners and my Aardvarkish Shawl pattern was published.  I’d been quite busy in 2017 generally as I also published my Contrast Cuffs, Heels and Toes tutorial!

I digress – back to October!

I’d started working with West Yorkshire Spinners earlier that year and designed the Simple Rib Socks pattern for them, and then I was delighted when they asked me to design a pattern for their new limited edition Christmas yarn.  Now, the WYS Christmas yarn is something of a tradition but back then, it was only the second year that they had produced it (their first Christmas yarn was Holly Berry) and it really was a limited edition run and once it was gone, it was gone.  WYS wanted a basic socks pattern to go with it, and I designed the Candy Cane socks pattern for them which featured a different sort of heel flap – the Ribbed Heel flap which I developed so that it would make a better fit for people with wider feet.

The Candy Cane socks pattern is no longer available as a free download from WYS, but you can use the Basic 4ply Socks pattern and the Ribbed Heel flap from my Patchwork Socks pattern to recreate it for yourself.

Oh, I was beside myself with excitement to be asked to design another pattern for West Yorkshire Spinners, and now, eight years later, I still get a thrill of excitement to be involved in their new yarns and designs.  It never grows old!

Around October time, I published my Aardvarkish Shawl pattern too.  This is a one-skein shawl pattern which I designed with a one of a kind yarn that I was gifted at Yarndale – the yarn was called Frankenstein which was quite appropriate for Hallowe’en coming up, but didn’t seem quite right for a pretty yarn!

It was also clear in the skein that this yarn would not make matching socks, which is why I decided to design a shawl for a change instead – and the name “Aardvarkish” came from it being aarkvark-ish or one of a kind!  I really enjoyed designing and knitting it as something different to socks, and you start at the lace edging at the bottom and keep going until all the yarn is used up so the rows get shorter (always a bonus!) and there’s no waste.

In October 2018, you wouldn’t know that I had knitted any socks (or anything else) for myself at all!  A lot of 2018 was taken up writing More Super Socks so I had the four designs for that book that I’d knitted …

Top L-R: Drunken Cable Socks, Beatrice Socks; Bottom L-R: Flow Through Socks, Zig Zag Rainbow Socks

and I had some other projects during the year (including Fairy Lights, the 2018 WYS Christmas socks), and I will have knitted a pair for the Yarndale Sock Line and doubtless at least one pair for myself and my husband … I will have to get better at documenting them!

October 2019 brought a new cowl pattern.  2019 was the year of the first Winwick Mum Collection of Signature 4ply and oh my goodness, what a year that was!  I had always imagined what it would be like to have a range of Winwick Mum yarn and with the help of my friends at West Yorkshire Spinners, we brought it all to life!  I knitted so many pairs of socks in 2019 – I think when I added them up at the end of the year, I’d knitted 24 pairs and I was a bit socked out by New Year! 🙂  The yarn was launched in April 2019 and there were designs for the pattern book, designs for magazines, socks for myself (of course – you don’t have your own yarn and not wear it!) and towards the end of the year, a design for a cowl which had a nifty way of keeping the special Winwick Mum stripes looking as they do for a pair of socks.  This is the A-B-C Cowl – and I’ve got short hair!  I’ve only had long hair again since lockdown but it still feels a million years ago when I look at myself with short hair now!

I did have another pair of socks for me on the needles during October 2019 and it’s this pair.

I was knitting these on the way to the British Knitting Awards – nothing like a bit of train knitting! – and the yarn is Stylecraft Head over Heels in the shade Eiger which I think may have been discontinued now.

I also finished off a pair that had been languishing for some time in a project bag …

These were 6ply socks (here’s my Basic 6ply Boot Socks pattern in case you have some 6ply yarn handy) and I think I had put them to one side because they weren’t matching, but they were by the time I had finished them! 🙂

October 2020 coming up, but I think I’ll leave that for tomorrow – enjoy the rest of your Sunday and I’ll see you then! xx