Thank you!!

First of all to Bianca, who was my Secret Prayer sock swop partner. I received my parcel a couple of weeks ago but various things got in the way of me blogging (chartership portfolio, trip to Lincoln/Newark to rent house out, my laptop refusing to talk to the internet for a week...) about it, until now! Thank you so much Bianca! The idea of the swop was to pray for your partner at the same time as knitting them a pair of socks, and meanwhile someone else would be praying and knitting for you.

Aren't they cool?!

The yarn is Opal Rodeo and the pattern is one Bianca designed herself - and they fit perfectly!

Close up of the stitch pattern:

Her children helped her choose the yarn - the purple is because it's my favourite colour, blue for water (a blessing), yellow for the sun, green for the apple tree in her yard, white for the clouds and peach, her children's favourite fruit!

She also included a copy of the pattern, a notebook and pen and a ball of Opal so I can have a go myself:


I haven't heard back from the person I was praying/knitting for yet so I'd better not post a pic of what I knitted for her yet!

Also, thank you to everyone who left comments on my last post when I asked for advice about my wobbly cables. I tried knitting the last knit stitch TBL for a few rows, continuing on, and it made a dramatic difference:

So I frogged all of it and started again, knitting the last knit stitch TBL all the way along. It looks SO much better:

The back is now finished!! Thank you for all the advice everyone! I'm sorry I didn't get a chance to reply individually - my broadband went even wobblier than the ribbing...

I've also been up to other exciting things. I'm loving my veg box and having lots of fun cooking the contents. It included stripy aubergines one week...

We also had a guest staying for a while. Big Monkey was delivered to work, and proved very good at cataloguing (until the IT manager saw him and said he didn't think the Elf and Safety people would be impressed with the distance from the keyboard for him as it wasn't ergonomically sound and he'd have backache before too much longer).


So he came home to the flat to spend some quality time with his brother, Monkey, and nephews (I think the other nephew must have taken this photo, as he isn't in it).

Big Monkey is now en route to his new friend, Michele, who lives in the US and was desperate to get a Monkey but nowhere was prepared to ship overseas. Which is where I came in...

Fortunately we'd just got some new bookrests at work and the boxes were going for recycling so I said I could use them instead. One was just the right size for Big Monkey, and the rest will be perfect for stash Sorting Out!

Hopefully he'll have a safe journey.