Strawberry Socks are out!

It's all true:There are socks, they have strawberries on them, and you can now make a pair of your very own! Get it here on Ravelry, and expect it to turn up in my Etsy shop sooner or later (the ol' Etsy shop is long overdue for a massive re-stocking.)

As the construction is simple and so is the strawberry motif, these socks would be a good first project for someone who is new to colourwork and/or fancy socks.

And now I'm off to work on some Gnome socks, and some Clerkenwell socks, and yet another pair of socks. Oh, and NEW mittens -- wait 'til you see THEM. This is multi-tasking at its finest.

I leave you with what I'm sure will be the first of several What-I-Did-On-(one of)-My-Summer-Vacations photo-tidbits. This is the mug that haunted me in NYC each day as I enjoyed my tea at Birch Coffee: Not exactly the piece of china that one would like to be greeted by each morning after one had recently heard the story of Lucy, as I had.

Home and away and back again

It's official -- The Garden is Bigger than All of Us. The peppers are especially prolific (and photogenic):Those are Super Chili (remember them?), Cayenne, Serrano, Jalapeno and Hot Portugal peppers. Someone may have gotten a little bit carried away in the hot pepper section of the garden centre.

There are also all kinds of interesting people to meet out in The-Bigger-than-All-of-Us Garden, such as this Fellow (Lady? I never can tell with bugs):
Hello! You have lovely beady-looking compound eyes, Mr./Ms. Mantis!

In knitting news, progress continues on the Strawberry socks:I'll also have you know that we are mere days away from their pattern release.

Progress has also begun on Clerkenwell, the new socks for Gentlemen:I've decided that just about everything looks three times better when it's photographed at Czehoski. Oh, and I kinneared Mick there (it was my first time):What a charming little place...and the fact that it's a mere three doors down from Romni Wools? You Torontonians really are fortunate.

Strawberry Mittens are now live!

It's true! The Strawberry Mittens are finished and ready to go!Instructions are included, as usual, to make a par of fingerless Strawberry Mittens as well. Get them here on Ravelry or here in my Etsy shop.I can hardly believe how fast these mittens happened. The idea for mittens with strawberries on popped into my head late in the afternoon this past Sunday (that would be the day before yesterday.) Yesterday I cast on, and turned out over more than half a mitten. And now today -- the mitten got fingertips and a stripey thumb, and I re-did the charts and wrote up the pattern -- and here we are! Which is just as well, really, since the Main Colour yarn (Knit Picks Palette in Blossom Heather) kept reminding me of strawberry ice cream, which just made me hungry. As I was making them I also fancied that I could actually smell strawberries, too. I think this was all brought on by some kind of strange play between the pink and the red (Palette in Pimento) yarns -- the colour combination came out looking really luscious.

Would you believe that this is my 45th pattern for SpillyJane Knits? I hardly can!

Now to get to work on pattern No. 46...and to get to knitting my sock-contribution for Three Irish Girls' Sock Yarnista club (I'm Miss March 2010.)

There are new mittens and they have strawberries on

I am not making this up:They're even half-finished (and they've been Ravelled) -- not bad for an afternoon's work! Just call it my ode to "cute culture." I need to see this strawberry motif on legwarmers.

As for the next pair of mittens...well. They're on the way! They're distinctly darker in theme and motif and I love them already. I hope you will, too.