Born to be wild

... ah, the rural idyll of inner London. I wonder if it's the state of our back yard that encourages the more picturesque wildlife ?

Luuuuuurve. No, really...

Yes, this is a post all about love. Or Liab, to be more accurate (and Bavarian). In traditional Alpine knitting, there are several variations of single twisted stitches weaving over and under each other, and they are generally known as Liab (Love).

To Illustrate what I mean, here's a scan from my favourite go-to book when it comes to Alpine knitting, Baeuerliches Stricken by Lisl Fanderl.

Brennende Liab (burning love) creates essentially a plain weave effect, Vergessene Liab (forgotten love) has lengths of no crossing in between, and Offene Liab (open love) has one direction of stitches always over the other direction. Since these patterns are centuries old, I don't think Offene Liab would signify an open relationship, but you never know...

The reason I am blathering on about this is that I have just released another pattern which uses the same principle, albeit with two stitches moving across the ground each time. It's on Ravelry here .

Krautmeister

Today I uploaded another pattern onto Ravelry, Kraut . I wouldn't normally blog about this, but I then I don't normally blog about ANYTHING, it seems. Time to change that, still early enough in the new year to make an effort, right ?

Funnily enough, I have been called many thinks since I moved to London (all in jest and jolly good fun, I assume...), but Kraut wasn't one of them, probably more of an American thing, I guess ? Anyway, I liked the bluntness of the word, and the sock was designed for the January challenge in the Sock Knitters Anonymous group, which was Flora or Fauna themed. Predictably, there are lots of socks with pretty flowers and butterflies being knitted, and they are all beautiful, don't get me wrong, but just not for me.

I was briefly toying with a cockroach sock, but I had this eye-searingly bright green yet to use up, so this was a natural match, and over all, I am quite happy with my (un)kraut.