FO's, NFO's and the sock of DOOM part 5? (plus yarn update)

The Sock of Doom is finished!!! (At least the first one). To recap, I've frogged because the pattern was too simple (and I forget to count); frogged because the darned thing was far too small (that was up to heel 1st time); Frogged because of pattern again, and finally frogged because in my infinite wisdom, I thought the recalculated pattern might make the sock a bit wide around the ankle, switched to what I thought were 2.25mm needles only to find out (past the heel again, of course) they were actually 2mm needles and the width was the same as before the stitch increase! Aaaaaaaaarghhhh!!!!!

So anyway, It's finished. And yes, the foot's still a little snug lengthwise but I'm not ripping it again 'till I've finished the other one! Here it is in it's evil glory...
I have obviously been feeling sorry for myself this week which ended up in a second visit to my LYS! If she had not put out 8 balls of Patons Greta (old discontinued singles yarn- gorgeous!) in a cream ( dyepot heaven!), I might have got away with a single trip. However, I'd also spotted some more Rowan 4 ply packs on a shelf and so I asked (very nicely) if I could see the colours (as they were in a shady corner).

Anyway, it transpires that one pack is the denimy blue I was clearing from the shelves (till someone came along and snatched the last of it!) and the other a gorgeous brown that was also in short supply on the shelves and also craved for. So, on Monday,I bought 10 balls 4ply in midnight, 5 balls of Zanzibar kept for me from the week before and the ubiqitous (god, how DO you spell that?) Filatura de Crosa mohair multi ( she'd found more again!) PLUS, asked her to keep the other pack for me FULLY INTENDING to pick it up the next week. But the wool called to me, there's no other explanation!

Anyhoo, to offset the extra balls (I count 2 skeins of 4 ply as 1 ball as they're 25g)- 20 in total, I've been knitting like fury BIG projects and hit a snag or two. Neither are quite finished yet, they're Nearly Finished Objects (or NFO), but here's where we're at up to now...

The first is Colinette Point 5, various colours, pattern Cerys from the Wayfarer book. Typical convoluted story, I began knitting it a few months ago but couldn't get the tension right, it was the one and only project I have EVER done where my tension was too tight! It's always too loose, so god knows what happened there! I frogged it and waited until I got my 15mm needles back to try again.

So, good girl, I knits a tension swatch- guess what- too loose! So, I knitted a swatch in 12mm, still a bit tight but damn near there, so I knit up a size larger than normal, it said it'd take 10 balls so I used 3 diff colourways to make up the yardage. Thing is, I've got 2 balls left, so I didn't need to add the turquiose stripe at all!

Still, it's all sewn up one side, needed an underarm gusset as big projects often do, and there's just the other side to sew AND A ZIP TO PUT IN! Joy!!!(not).

Typical camera, the real thing's not half as eyepoppingly vibrant, but you get the idea.

The second NFO is a little further from completion. It's a jacket in Sirdar Bigga which as you can see, is fetchingly trimmed in a contrast shade. I had a big ball when I started it a while ago, and kept everything together, but with the passage of time, it's gone west! I found a titchy ball of it and manged to do both fronts and one sleeve but now I have to turn the house upside down to find the wandering ball and finish the darned thing!

Is it just me, or is my life particularly complicated at the moment

Madam's having a bit of a rest after a fun-packed day scrounging food from unsuspecting dog owners and rolling in something unmentionable (don't they all?). It's a dog's life!

So anyway, this was an extra blog 'cos I'm off to visit Anne for the weekend, expect a slew of new photos on my return (providing I remember the camera- and charger!)