As you well know, my love of vampires is year-round, but it did work out nicely that this first pair of blood drip socks were ready just in time for Halloween! 🩸🧦🧶 I had the idea for these blood drip socks a few weeks before and I’m so pleased with how they turned out!
While the builders are working on renovating the main part of our boat, I’ve mostly been holed up in our small, self-contain captain’s cabin meaning that I haven’t been doing as much sewing as I normally would (for the dust, disruption and that I can’t be anywhere near them for shielding reasons!). So I’ve been getting a lot of loom knitting done! If you don’t know what loom knitting is, Google is your friend!
I love loom knitting socks in particular, and I’m normally pretty quick with them these days, but I actually cast these on in Oct 2019! Why so long? Well, mostly because I quickly paused them to work on my loom knit sweater. Once that was finished, I picked them up again and they came along as quickly as I’d expect for a nice and simple repeat.
Strap in because this may be my first finished make of 2021, but it started in 2019, and it’s a whopper.
I learned to loom knit a few years ago because I was really only interested in making socks, and I have zero desire whatsoever to learn “regular” needle knitting (I am beyond bored of people telling me I should – I don’t care – there’s the door!) so to discover there was an old-fashioned method to do so got me excited and I made a LOT of socks over the years. I also made a few hats, and a cowl, and a pair of weird mittens, but then the worm of an idea grew in my head – “You should make a sweater.”
The perils of running a one-woman business alongside an office job and attempting to also have a bit of a social life is that, at times, I have to make some tough decisions regarding my time. So since I’ve been away the past two weekends (prime-time for me to work on FehrTrade), I’ve not had any time to blog since I prioritised my Friday/lunchtimes/evenings to working on the new pattern in development, albeit slowly. But I definitely want to capture the last two weekends away before they fade into memory!
For those of you who have been following my loom knitting journey over the last 18ish months, I’ve actually made something other than socks!
A few weekends ago I found myself in HEMA (a Dutch interiors, snacks, and household shop) picking up a few things and I spied a cushion cover for a fiver that I liked the look of. I’d been meaning to make myself a project bag for my sock loom and various supplies for a while now, and I saw the potential! I was also too excited to get a Before photo but it’s up online and now I see it’s only £2! Figures!
The cushion cover featured a loosely woven fabric on one side (which I used as the bag exterior) plus a plain canvas on the other (which became the bag lining) and a matching zip so it was excellent value considering the zipper alone would’ve cost me around £3.50!
With the book writing and marathon training in full swing over the past few months, I needed a bit of a diversion in my spare time. Because, even though I love them both dearly, when you’re thinking about sewing and activewear and running all day long, sometimes you want to just sit down and not think about either for a bit!
I’ve never knitted before in my life, nor have I frankly had any desire to. I have enough hobbies, and I don’t get excited by yarn in the slightest. I’ve never had any desire to knit a scarf or hat, which seems to be the basic beginner projects you must suffer through in order to learn the craft (a bit like making PJ bottoms in sewing I guess?). But socks are different – yes, I could definitely see the appeal in making socks, but they seemed really complicated to knit, and again, I have zero desire to go through months of learning how to do the basics in order to get to the thing I actually wanted to make.
