welcome to the thunderdome and socks

its 2021, its been five/six months since my last blog post, we are currently in our second? major lockdown and here i am writing my blog. 

Who'd have thunk it?

So what have I been doing? and why haven't i been blogging?

WELL LIFE!

First of all there was the lovely thing called divorce , which I'm pretty sure is designed purely to suck the living soul out of a person and cause enough grief that most people think screw it and stay together no matter how miserable they are. 

Next up i had to figure out how to juggle being a working mum and having a small child, huge shout out to my mum and dad for providing childcare and very often hot food when i was too tired to make my own. 

Then i got a very lovely boyfriend, who although wonderful is a complete time suck. Suddenly i was faced with the choice of cuddle or sew and what can i say hes a really good hugger. 

Then I had some medical problems to contend with.

Then the pandemic came and suddenly i was having to cope with having said small child at home all day and trying desperately to remember all of the things i learnt about at school. 

Then i sold my house and moved in with my boyfriend, which is very similar to divorce in its soul sucking nature.

And now more pandemic.

So yeah that's basically been the last two years of my life in a nutshell.

Which hopefully explains my absence from blogging. 

The past two years has been a bit of a trial to be honest. I completely lost my sew jo, my motivation to create and my energy. But in return I found some wonderful friends an excellent boyfriend and i was reminded of just how awesome my family are. 

I've had a few projects on the go but nothing really filled me with joy the way it used to. I made blinds for my dads campervan, I made some stuff for work but everything else just seemed like a bit of a chore. Especially sewing. 

Until today. After a few days of having the inkling that i might like to sew I finally sat down and actually made something and now I'm feeling pretty darn chuffed with myself. 

Naturally its now to dark to take any nice pictures but i do have something else to talk about.

I MADE SOCKS!!! 

These were my first pair, during one of the spells between lockdowns me and my friend Aly met at hobbycraft for some retail therapy. She had just learnt how to knit and wanted to pick up some more wool and she was quick to spot a kit that apparently would make two identical socks. 

She decided despite being a beginner knitter that she wanted to make socks and somehow i got roped in.

I had to learn some new skills for this, including how to do a long tail cast on! and how to knit with DPNs. FYI i am terrible with double pointed needles and ended up swapping them out for a circular sock needle. 

SO MUCH EASIER!!!!!

I knitted them up reasonably quickly and found the instructions quite easy to follow, after they were finished and i had worn them around the house i realised quickly that socks were going to be my new addiction. 

So naturally i went online and ordered some more sock yarn and started another pair.

Oh yes we also got a new kitten , meet Buffy. She was my birthday present. john was insistant that we were having no more cats but his friends have a farm and this little ladies mum didn't seem to be coming back so we took her home and i ended up bottle feeding her. 

These socks are in the rum paradise colour way by the west yorkshire spinners. 

I was slightly nervous about running out of wool so i split the ball in half. 

However, i didn't think it through properly and as you can see the stripes now go in the opposite order on the second sock i knit. 

Its irritating but less noticeable than I thought it would be. I knit up the first sock quickly during a period of self isolation. Little man had a cough so we both ended up getting covid tests. Luckily we were both negative. Although it was a horrible experience, lil dude was not impressed with me ramming a stick up his nose and i was nearly sick in the car.  

Anyway the second sock took ages. And by ages I mean I had finished one section of self isolation and then had to start another one, this time my phone pinged asking me to stay at home. As it turns out my phone pinged because the people in the house next door had tested positive and it made my phone go off. 

Anyway I did finally finish the sock and now i own two pairs of hand knit socks!!!! 

So yeah I guess I haven't been completely unproductive!

Hopefully i wont leave it so long next time!

Stay home, 

Stay safe 

and look after yourselves

Much Love 

Frankie 

xxx