Woldwide Knit in Public Day

Worldwide Knit in Public day was on Saturday, and I was delighted to find out that there was a public knitting group organised in Strasbourg. I'm a bit shy about going to these things on my own, so when a friend asked if I wanted to meet up on Saturday I suggested we go to the park where the knitting was happening. She then said she had learned a few stitches over Christmas and had already knit a garter stitch scarf, but gave up soon after that. So I brought her a pair of needles and she got to work!

Because I'm shy, we decided to sit on a bench at first and watch the group to suss out if they all knew each other or if they were welcoming newbies as well. We were working up the courage to go over when a girl approached us and asked in English if we'd like to join. Somebody had heard my friend and I speaking English as they passed and the group got a girl who studies English to ask us to join. It was so nice how they went out of their way like that to include us.

So we sat down and chatted for a few hours. It makes such a difference to have company while you knit. I don't have friends who knit so I usually do it on my own in front of a knitting podcast or an episode of White Collar. I maybe should have brought something simpler than my colourwork socks: I got distracted from the pattern a lot, and ended up making more mistakes while chatting than I ever did on my own!

I was a great day out and the ladies from the Strasknitting group are so friendly! I'm disappointed I only joined them a few days before I leave for good, but I'm so glad I found out how nice it is to be part of a knitting group. I'll be much less shy to join one in Dublin!

I forgot to bring my camera, but I took a few photos with my phone:

As I said, I won't be able to join them at their next meeting as my time in Strasbourg is coming to an end. Today I will be packing, tonight my dad and brother arrive and tomorrow we'll set off through the Black Forest region (and Paris on the way home).

Ribbit!

Sometimes we have to frog a project we're currently working on. A lot of the time it's a very hard thing to do - when it's a project you can't wait to finish or have invested a lot of time into. Other times it's not so hard.


Today, for the first time ever, I was excited to frog a project. From the very start I was unsure of what I wanted to do with the yarn. It was my first variegated sock yarn and I couldn't decide on a way to show off the yarn and the pattern at the same time. 

I picked a lacy pattern and got to work, only to find that the colours were hidden by the pattern and the pattern was hidden by the colours! I could tell it wasn't going to work shortly after starting, so I took some pictures and decided to sleep on it before frogging.

I knew this pattern wasn't right for the yarn, but I had no idea which pattern would be. Little did I know my answer would come to me that night. In my dreams I was knitting colourwork socks! I could not believe it, my subconscious had helped me out of my knitting dilemma. Colourwork socks would be perfect! Why not pair the red yarn up with another colour and knit a pattern which will both show off the colours of the yarn and break up any pooling which might have occurred?


I got to work straight away and remembered a pattern I had been wanting to knit for a while. And so I present to you the very beginnings of my new favourite socks: Red Herring by Cookie A

The Harry Potter House Cup

In my last post I mentioned the Harry Potter House Cup on Ravelry, but the post was already so long I couldn't really go into detail about why I signed up, what I'm making or how it's going so far.


I can't remember how I found out about the House Cup, but I know it was right before sign-ups for this term began. Each term is three months long, and every student must turn in at least one finished item per month. As I'm spending the summer at home while most of my friends will be abroad, I figured I'd have plenty of free time to contribute to my team's efforts.


May was my exam month so I didn't have a lot of time for knitting. I did manage to finish a pair of socks just in time to submit them and I'm delighted with how they turned out.

I could only spend half an hour knitting here and there during exams, so the first sock took me three weeks to finish. After my exams I had one week left to knit an entire sock, and to my surprise, I managed to finish it just in time.

For the next two months, I imagine I'll have a lot more free time to knit, and I'd like to turn in more than just one project per month.