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.

The joy of sox

I have taken this one with my phone, hence the abominable quality, just to illustrate that I am mainly into knitting at the moment, and the embroidery is taking a well deserved rest.

They are self-striped, with half the skein re-wound into an extra ball. I tried using one strand from the outside with one strand from the inside, but because of the repeat, I ended up striping at least two colours onto themselves, which didn't look great. The fact that one of these colours was sludge didn help, either...

Wasn't keen on the variation of thickness in the yarn, and they look a bit scratchy and rustic. I wish you could get the colours on a quality like Regia...