Hey, Hey, We're the Monkeys!

Brief pause in the Utah footage - to be resumed tomorrow...

My Sockapalooza socks arrived yesterday, and I got Monkey socks! They came from Angela in Edmonton (no blog?), and they're great! They fit perfectly, and the yarn colors are perfect for me. And she sent Smarties, which I love and which are very hard to find in the US.

My favorite thing about my socks is how well they match my living room rug - isn't that great? I couldn't get a photo that really showed off the Monkey pattern, especially because the yarn is fairly complicated. I'm not sure what kind of yarn it is - perhaps Angela will chime in and let me know if I should wash my socks when the time comes. This was my first Sockapalooza and I'm really happy with how it turned out. Thanks again Angela, I love my socks!

Stitch & Pitch

Phew, I am really stressed about leaving for vacation in six hours (at 3:00am), but I thought a quick update was in order before I left. Last night several of the Fiberphiles and I attended the Seattle Stitch & Pitch, where we watched the Mariners lose their 7th straight 2-6 to the Oakland As. My sockapalooza sock enjoyed the trip immensely:So much so that it flew off the needles and the socks were completed this evening, just under the wire. Although I'm not planning to mail them until I get back from vacation, I didn't want them hanging over my head uncompleted.

Project Stats: Angel's Rest Socks

Pattern: Angel's Rest, from the Peak Experience Socks leaflet (Fiber Trends AC-49).

Yarn: Angora Farms Monarch, colorway Ivy. Yarn purchased at the Madrona Fiber Arts Festival this past winter.

Needles: Size 2 Brittney birch DPNs, the little 5" ones.

Time on the Needles: The second sock took less than a week but the first lanquished. I'd say about a month.

Impressions: These were much easier than my first choice for my sock pal, Cookie A's Twisted Flower Socks. I really like this Monarch yarn - it's similar to Socks that Rock mediumweight I'd say, and generally it stripes instead of pooling, although it did pool a bit on these socks, probably due to the increasing and decreasing, or perhaps just the stitch number. It bugs me a bit that the yarn behaved differently on the second sock, but I'm working hard to just let that go. I do find it surprising though...I really hope my pal likes these, and that they fit. Her feet are slightly larger than mine but only a bit so I think these will be good. We'll see.

A brief note on my impending absence. Dave and I are going camping in Utah for the next week with both sets of our parents. This will be the first meeting of the parents, so I'm sure I'll have good stories when I come back. I sense there is a movie script in here somewhere - whether it's a comedy or tragedy is yet to be determined. For knitting, I'm planning to start the Ruffled Tuxedo Tank from the Summer 2007 Interweave, using Elsebeth Lavold Hempathy. I'm also going to take some sock yarn for simple socks just in case the tank proves to be more problematic than expected. This is not unlikely as I'm converting the pattern into the round, as well as knitting it in stockinette instead of reverse stockinette. I was thinking of doing that anyway, because I think reverse stockinette tends to look a bit sloppy no matter how evenly one knits, but I was sold when I saw someone else on Ravelry used stockinette. Have I mentioned how I love Ravelry? It's great. Hope you all have a good week!

Sockapalooza Update

First things first, let me say that I loved the Harry Potter (no spoilers). I got a bit of a slow start with it, and had some trouble getting really into it, which I think was due largely to the fact that I didn't want to finish it and have the whole series be over. That changed around midnight Sunday night, when I became obsessed and ended up staying up until 3:30am reading and 4:15am thinking. And then I dreamt about it. In my dream I was reading extra chapters, which all fit in quite nicely and would have made good additions. Too bad I didn't write them down! Anyway, I loved the book and will be rereading it again soon - I was reading so fast at the end that I'm sure I skipped some interesting stuff in my desire to find out what was going to happen. Yesterday was thus a bit of a wash, due to the fatigue...

I have been working diligently on my Sockapalooza socks. I finished the first one on Friday, and today I turned the heel of the second sock: For a recap, this is the Angel's Rest pattern from Fiber Trends Peak Experience Socks, knit with Angora Farms Monarch sock yarn, in Ivy. Sorry for the lack of links but it's late and I've linked them before. I'm hoping to finish these this week because I'm going to Utah for vacation on Saturday, and although I don't intend to mail the socks until I get back (a couple of days late - I will let my pal know so she doesn't worry), I'd like to have them done so I don't have to worry about them on the trip. I have other knitting plans for my vacation, which I'll hopefully share before I go. A quick question for the Sockapalooza veterans out there - is it customary to mail other gifts along with the socks? This is my first swap of this nature, and I don't want to send only the socks if my pal is going to be expecting other little gifts as well. Please advise. I have no qualms about including some goodies, and would do so happily, I'm just not sure what the standard is for this type of swap.

Ooh, ooh, ooh, I finally got my Ravelry invite last Friday!!! Happy dance, happy dance! It turns out I got my invite on June 20th, but my Hotmail spam filter ate it, and until recently there wasn't an easy way to find out where you were in the Ravelry waiting list. Just Friday I noticed the 'type in your email and we'll tell you where you stand' function, and in minutes I was raveling away. It's SO great, I love it. It has been sucking up a fair bit of knitting time, but it's worth it to have everything organized so neatly. I love organizing and making lists. Ravelry is perfect for me. I couldn't be happier. I'm eemarsha, if you want to come find me!

Plan B

Now, I really meant to make the Twisted Flower socks for my Sockapalooza pal. Really I did. I made a valiant (kind of) effort at it, but in the end I decided that, while the pattern is lovely and I would love to make it someday, this is not the day. There's no way I could finish those in time without devoting a lot more effort to them than I am willing or able to. So, I've moved on to something else for my pal. Not that she's not worthy of the original socks, but at 20 minutes a round I just can't spare the time to finish them on a schedule. So, now I'm using this lovely green variegated yarn to make the Angel's Rest socks (from the Fiber Trends Peak Experience Socks pattern). The yarn Monarch sock yarn from Angora Valley Farms, in the Ivy colorway (not currently on their website).

So far I'm about 3.5" into the leg, and I'm really enjoying knitting this pattern. The color is more accurate in the first photo of the yarn cake. Because it's much simpler than my originally intended pattern, the vibes that are going into this sock are much better than my pal would have received from the Twisted Flower socks, so I think this is for the best. Based on previous experience with this brand of yarn, and having seen many sample socks knit with it at various fiber festivals, I expected to have some striping action. I just finished a pair of socks using this yarn in another colorway (need to blog those!), which striped nicely, and that was one of the reasons I chose to use this for this pattern, which is ideal for striping yarns. But, instead of striping I have a bit of a wide spiral going on, as you can see clearly in the photo. I'm actually okay with this and think it looks pretty cool, since all the colors are greens. I hope my pal doesn't mind! I suspect that this yarn would stripe with a different stitch count or without the lace pattern (which I realize isn't apparent from the photo). I've only devoted about 3 hours to these so far and they're moving along quite quickly, which is good since I'll need to start devoting a fair bit of time to lace once the first part of the Mystery Stole pattern is released on Friday!

Sock Update, and Project Spectrum Plans

You know, I didn't knit a stitch between Thursday night and today at lunch. Just not feeling the love from any of the knits at the moment I guess. Thursday I made some progress on my Sockapalooza socks, but these babies are going so slowly. The cabling on tiny DPNs is tedious. Not really difficult, just exceedingly awkward, and I have really tiny hands. I can't imagine what it would be like trying to wrangle all of the needles with large hands. Here's a progress shot: I apologize that you can't really see the pattern very well - red is very difficult to photograph. I really need to make some progress on these. As you can see, I've started using a stitch holder as a cable needle. I initially tried an extra DPN, but it was too long and got in the way, and then I tried my smallest cable needle, but it was also awkward, so I went with this plan. One of the women at Weaving Works suggested I try a toothpick, which is not a bad idea. We'll see. I like the way the leafy bit at the top of the sock (bottom of photo) looks, but I'm not sure that the cables are standing out enough. I think I really need to finish the first repeat before doing anything rash, like ripping it out and making my pal some plain stockinette socks!

June finds us at the beginning of a new set of Project Spectrum colors! For June and July the colors are red, black, and metallics. Lucky for me I'm already knitting in those colors! I'm working on the red socks, as well as my red $1.50 cardigan (which I have been working on, just not showing). I think I'll be lucky to finish either or both of those during these two months, since Eunny's Anemoi Mittens are pulling at me (I might swatch tonight, if I get my lab meeting preparations done at a reasonable hour). I have a black hat in the queue as well. We shall see how much is accomplished. Summer is always busy so I suspect the knitting might suffer.

Last night I dyed some yarn - one beautiful turquoise skein and one not-so-lovely burgundy and dark blue-grey skein. The latter I feel might improve greatly upon reskeining, and will be probably be quite nice once knit, but isn't looking overly attractive hanging in my shower. Photos when it's dry, even of the ugly one!

Today I got to play with the following dangerous and exciting goodies:

1. Phenol - Corrosive, extremely poisonous and easily absorbed through the skin

2. Chloroform - Anesthetic, poisonous

3. Acrylamide - Carcinogen, neurotoxin

All so that later in the week I can use these:

1. Formamide - Not good for the reproductive system

2. Formaldehyde - Corrosive, mutagenic, extremely toxic

3. P32 - Radioactive

The science, it's good times I tell ya'!

Socks!

I keep forgetting to mention this, but I finished the first of the Purdy Plum socks on Friday. Isn't it purdy? Haha...I really like the colors and I'm bummed I made this a tad too large for myself. But, it will make a lovely Christmas gift, don't you think? I think the color is off in the photo, but the light bits are actually pale turquoise. Now onto the second sock...
But first, I finally got around to starting the socks for my Sockapalooza 4 pal. They don't have to be mailed until early August, so I've been procrastinating (nothing new there, movin' on). I've actually thought about the socks a lot, and I was going to make some Monkey socks, but then I noticed my pal was making some of those already (not giving anything away there, since the entire internet is making Monkeys)! So, back to the drawing board I went. Lord knows I have sock patterns coming out my ears. My pal was up for anything except pastels, so I thought I'd be adventurous. Thus I'm making the Twisted Flower Socks, by Cookie A. I'm using Louet Gems Pearl as called for, in bright red (surely not pastel!). I'd say the color is pretty accurate. I was actually hoping to use the same green as in the pattern, but the only greens they had at Weaving Works were borderline pastel, and we couldn't have that. Like my pal I'm not keen on pastels. As you can see, I've really just begun. However, we're about to watch The Last King of Scotland, so I suspect some progress will be made! I have a nagging suspicion that it's a mistake making such a complicated pattern for someone I don't even know, but, well, I want to make them more than I want to wear them, so perhaps it's a perfect idea.
Oh, the blanket ends? Not yet woven in. Rachel is going to show me a trick, so the blanket will be heading on into work tomorrow.

Almost there!

My Jewels Carigan (aka Short-sleeved cardigan with ribbing) is nearing completion! It's all finished aside from the button bands, and the blocking that shall come before them. I've been procrastinating on the finishing because I didn't have my buttons in hand, but you can see them up there on the sweater. Here's a close-up: I got the buttons at Nancy's Sewing Basket in Seattle, which is a lovely shop. Not being a sewer, I'd not been in before, but they have a lovely selection of buttons and everyone there was very helpful. The buttons are simple, dark wood with light flecks, and I think they complement the yarn quite well. So, now onto the blocking and buttonband knitting! I hope to have this done by/over the weekend, but this week is quite busy so we'll see.

I also mentioned that I'd started a sock, knit with Monarch sock yarn in Purdy Plum. Here is the progress so far: I really like the way that it's striping, and the yarn is very nice to knit with. I believe it's the same base yarn as Socks that Rock, and it feels just as nice. I'm think I'm getting about 8 st/inch on size 2 needles. I'm about at the heel (small feet), so there's been a brief pause while I figure out how I want to do the heel. Have you noticed I'm all about pausing/procrastinating/abandoning projects when they're at a spot where something different must be done? I should get over that. My excuse for the socks is not really that I'm unsure about the heel, but mostly that I was knitting this while watching a movie on Sunday night, and I didn't want to deal with the heel whilst involved in the movie. That said, the movie was awful, so I should've just pressed on. In case you're curious, it was The Good Shepherd, which I had such high hopes for and was quite disappointed in. Dave and I agreed that we were both bored and falling asleep about 30 minutes in but neither of us wanted to bring it up in case the other was enjoying it! The acting was good but none of the characters were likable so it was difficult to get involved in the story. Just bland overall.

I've signed up for Sockapalooza Four, but I've not heard anything about it and haven't been able to log in and find out who I'll be making socks for. There is a blog, but I've not recieved the invite to it, and I've tried several times to log in and check my info, find my pal, etc, without success. It's pretty frustrating but I know I'm in since I found myself in the participants list! There are over 1000 of us, so I'm sure getting all the technical stuff sorted out is quite a pain, so I'm going to be patient. After all, the socks don't need to be done until August 2nd, so there's really no rush!