Wednesday, June 17, 2026

Some FOs and pictures from my travels

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Cute crochet cactus, a birthday gift.

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Single sock knitted flat, striped with two ends of sock yarn. A test knit for possible fair isle socks in the future. Yes, Second Sock Syndrome in action, it has no mate!

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Belated picture - crochet and knitted hearts for Coventry hospital's palliative care unit

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CSM socks made at the MKC retreat day and grafted the following weekend.

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Proof that it's working, a repeating bird pattern centred on a "sleeve" sample - I'm instructing someone how to use her Passap E6000 with DesignAKnit at the weekend, and had to figure out how to use the integrated, interactive knitting feature with the Passap. Long story short, I'd downloaded a pattern to that machine with the old W10 laptop, but hadn't got it working with W11 (but it's been working with the Brother and Silver machines). It turns out that (a) my curly cord needs repairing AGAIN (repeated error 200) and (b) the Passap only wishes to communicate with the right hand USB port and not the left one. Nope, I've no idea why either! Ignore the wonky edges, I was being lazy and not fully fashioning them as I usually would. 

It appears that you first have to apply the pattern, position it, and "integrate" it into the garment piece. Then you download the stitch pattern using "integrated download" not "download" - somehow I missed that the first time. Then when you start knitting the piece, select "integrated" not "shape only". It makes perfect sense now, but my poor old brain was struggling with it last weekend. At some point in this process, the Passap will tell you if it's not happy with the design - for example, you've used a two colour double-bed technique, but selected a 3 colour single-bed technique. I've never had issues before BUT so far I've only knitted straight pieces where the pattern alignment wasn't a concern. So it was a nice learning experience for me, and as part of that I discovered there are tutorial videos on the Softbyte website that I'll be working through. 

I won't bore you with too many holiday snaps - in April, we had a short break in Hathersage, famously the last resting place of Little John (of Robin Hood's merry men), and diverted to Chesterfield on the way home. In May we did a week in Venlo, Cologne and a night in Amsterdam. As you can see, it's been a dull, damp, chilly spring! 

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View from Stanage Edge. The five mile hike from Hathersage was hard work!

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None of my workmates believe me when I tell them this place exists in the Peak district.

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Famous twisted spire at Chesterfield, the photo doesn't do it justice. Apparently it's the weight of lead applied to a medieval wooden spire (but there are lots of legends involving the Devil as to why it's like this). 

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Cologne cathedral is HUGE. Yes, the weather was as grim as it looks alas!

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A visit to the Lindt chocolate museum. Worth it just for the shop (which sells other brands too! Love it!).

Current mood: impressed

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