New socks, new medal

I must admit I'm not getting much knitting done during the Ravelympics as I'm a winter sports geek. I was watching the moguls while trying to finish my socks and was so captivated by the men's and women's events that I had to put my knitting down. But finish my socks I did.

They are the Vinnland pattern by Becca Compton and are fun to knit. I used the pattern chart plus my favourite toe up Evil Genius sock pattern from Yarmando.

The yarn is Schoppel-Wolle Zauberball in Cranberries (1963)and is good to work with unless you need to frog. The single ply nature of the yarn makes it quite "sticky", though the stitch definition is good. The colour variations don't show up too well in indoor lighting but I think I'll have to wait til about April to get any decent natural light. You'll just have to take my work for it that they look good.

I started these just before I went in to hospital for knee surgery last May. I got quite a lot of knitting done despite being groggy from a general anaesthetic and remember having conversations with the nursing team at 3am about knitting and telling them all about Ravelry. I'm still amazed when I meet knitters who don't know about Ravelry. It seems quite timely that I finish these now as I hopefully finish my physiotherapy and treatment for my broken knee over the next few weeks, just in time to get back on the ski slopes. I doubt I'll win any medals there so I better get on with my knitting.

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Lashing and lashings...

As well as talk of Clementine Cake on twitter there has been talk of brewing Ginger Beer. Ginger beer is my drink of choice and I'm always in search of a good one. I find many commercial ones too sweet. Once on holiday in Brasil I had a ginger beer made with freshly squeezed ginger which is the gold standard at the moment and a tough act to live up to. @eskimimi (who has a lovely blog ) linked to this River Cottage recipe last week . I had to hunt around for brewers yeast as the brewer's yeast you can buy in chemists and health food shops is deactivated so won't work for brewing, despite the name. (trade descriptions act anyone?). I ended up buying my yeast online after consulting my brewing guru Bioniclaura . As well as knitting Laura brews her own beer, which I got sample when I stayed with her and her lovely dog and husband in Dublin when I went over at the end of October. More on that later. I couldn't wait to get started but had to wait til we returned from Hasti

We have a winner...

Check out my pea seedling, how intact and un-nibbled it is. My mysterious object, as correctly guessed by Madmurdock and Montyknits, is a gastropod guard. It seems to be working. I'd heard that slugs and snails don't like slithering over hair. I tried using hair clippings a few years ago as a barrier. It worked for a few days, til I found chewed, leafless stems and on further inspection a guilty slug covered in ginger hair. Hopefully the fleecy barrier will stay in place and mean I get a good late crop of peas. Congratulations to the winners and thank you to everyone who took part.

Ceilings

Over Easter we went to Istanbul. It's one of those cities that's been lurking in the corners of my mind, from tales of Roman Constantinople, to bordering Europe and Asia with its dreaming mosque minarets. So I booked a bargain of a city break two days before we left, chucked some clothes in a bag, picked up a guidebook and off we went. There are more blog posts and photos on the way, as we had an excellent time there, but as you can see I was quite taken with ceilings and spent most of our four days there looking up.

Ginger Knits UK

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