What happened meanwhile? I finished my Conic (and still haven’t taken pictures of it) which took me maybe five months? I knit three pairs of socks the week before Christmas. Lesson learned: Prepare your presents beforehand. Perhaps I can stick to this next year.

The boyfriend and I were at the 30C3 in Hamburg and guess what? There were lots of knitting courses! Little side note, a conversation with a friend went as follows:
“I heard you wear at a knitting workshop!” – “Of course, I’ve been to all of them!” There was Yarnbombing, short rows, knitting machines, you name it. But there were also other fun things to do like lock picking, listening to talks and of course meeting people.

Anyway, one of the computer clubs introduced their hack of a Brother KH-910, a knitting machine from the 1970’s that’s never been hacked before. Right after their little workshop I went online to look for one of these darlings and actually bought one! It was kind of a Christmas present to myself.

We haven’t modified it yet, because I still need to practice some more stockinette on it. I don’t feel ready to knit stranded patterns (which this machine knits up beautifully).

Oh, and yesterday someone released a pattern on Ravelry which I’d been hoping/wishing for: It’s the Arrow socks (矢印靴下) by Makiho Negishi! She already released this stranded knitting pattern as mittens but I don’t wear mittens. Hand-knit socks however I wear all the time. My obsession with those socks went as far as looking at one of her project pictures and guesstimating the numbers of stitches in a repeat! Except or the pattern being in Japanese, it’s wonderfully detailed with more than 8 pages of picture tutorials and three different charts for the three sizes. If you register at stitch2.com, it’s even a free pattern.

I’m knitting the size 23.5 with a different gauge and elongated the foot a bit because my shoe size is 43.

One more thing arrived in the mail today. I got a Dawanda voucher for my birthday and up until now didn’t really know what to do with it. I dreamt up a few things, like cotton from Japan to make myself a blouse (as if that would ever happen) but in the end decided for this:

A drop spindle and a batt in vibrant yellow. So I will try my hand at spinning soon. Can’t wait!