Something to beat the chill

I'm still shivering away in Coventry where temperatures outside are struggling to get above freezing today. We've had snow showers on and off since Sunday and while none of it has really built up to significant levels, the light dusting of the stuff has frozen in place, giving Coventry a pretty wintery look to it. Any standing water or puddles have frozen solid and reported temperatures are down to -8C at night now.

The only reasonable way to respond to all this coldness was to cast on a sock.



This is my first 'patterned' sock, following Grumperina's Jaywalker pattern (Ravelry Link) and knit up in the Regia Design Line I picked up from Web of Wool back in October.

So far, the colourway is all I'd hoped for. It's colourful, bright and cheery, showing up the Jaywalker pattern beautifully.

My only problem is that I found the pattern increases and decreases difficult to do on my normal Clover bamboo needles which have quite blunt tips. To overcome this, I switched to some more pointy metal DPNs, but I'm finding them very hard on the hands. They don't flex as much, are 'harder' when I hold them and I'm finding that repeatedly pushing the tips back (to move the stiches into place so they can be knit) is making my fingers sore. There must be a technique to using pointy metal needles, but at the moment I don't have it.

The upside of this is of course, that I'm currently unlikely to sit for hours and hours watching the colours unfolding in front of me... Meaning the lace is still getting the odd look in (234 rows and counting) and I'm still hankering after the hook - so much so I may need to do a crochet project or two soon.