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Noro - I have a love-hate relationship with that brand of yarn. Love the way they do color; lots of other yarns try and even come close, but Noro's amazing colorways are still unequalled. Hate their tendency to leave a lot of vegetable matter in the yarn and how many skeins are chock full of knots, often resulting in abrupt color transitions. So I approached the skein of Silk Garden Sock with a mix of hope and trepidation, took it home anyway and split the skein.
Noro - fickle-hearted Noro! Everything started out so promisingly. As I split the skein in half, I didn't find a single knot in the entire skein! And hardly any VM either! Almost too good to be true - could this really be Noro? I cast on for waffle weave socks, having seen someone else's wonderful results with that yarn/pattern combination. In retrospect, she might have been using Kureyon Sock though. My attempt at them with Silk Garden Sock was a bust - wrong gauge when knit comfortably, nightmare to knit on needles small enough to make gauge. My second attempt was with a herringbone pattern, which was unsatisfying for a different reason - too much effort for no real visual impact. The plain cuff ribbing looked nicer that the herringbone zigzags.
Noro, oh, Noro, is that all you aspire to be - a plain pair of ribbed socks? Maybe you'll reconsider while you cool your heels in the sock yarn stash for now. I think I'll go work on something else right now.
[P.S. Kitty looks like she's here to stay. She's made herself quite at home, and we're calling her Muffin Top. She's a bit of a pudge.]
Hats - almost as much fun as socks. Here's the latest, and quite lovely, I think.
Pattern: Selbu Modern
Yarn: Koigu Premium Merino
Needles: US2 and US0
Koigu's colors, especially the Painter's Palette blends, are just stunning. I have a bunch in my stash, two skeins per color, bought with the intention of making them into socks. Well, in the meantime, it's just not my favorite sock yarn anymore, mostly because without any nylon it doesn't wear quite as well. So, what to do with it? This hat is one solution.
Small needle projects are fun when you want a lot of knitting in a nice portable package. I cast on for this in anticipation of some quality waiting room time at my annual appointment with the ob/gyn; the last few years, I've had some seriously long waits because of someone else going into labor. Since I was prepared for that, of course I got to go right in this time. The small needles only bugged me at the very end, as in the very last two decrease rounds, working with one color on each hand on double points. That was a major pain in the a**.
I'm old school; I like my double points and just haven't found the love for magic loop. But I did have an epiphany on those last two hateful rounds: working on double points while carrying yarn on the right hand sucks. I normally knit continental (yarn on the left hand), but the second color has to go somewhere. Every time I made a stitch with the right hand yarn, I had to let go of the right hand needle to "throw" the yarn around the stitch. A minor annoyance when there are a bunch of other stitches still on it to hold it in place; a nightmare when there are just a few, and the needle wants to slip away or twist in the breeze or otherwise generally misbehave. So, yes, I now see where "double point desperation" might come from, especially if you knit English.
[Kitty is still here. I think Egg is in love, despite his allergies. We agreed though that I should post signs in the neighborhood today, because it is bad karma to steal someone's pet.]
Look what showed up at the kitchen door this morning! We're evaluating each other for compatibility.
Right now she's hanging out on Egg's desk while he doing the taxes. I think she's working her kitty magic on him. The dog is super excited; he likes cats. Kitty is less enthusiastic about him but surprisingly tolerant. She's only had to slap him twice so far.
Socks are the knitting equivalent of comfort food for me. If I just need to knit on something, a simple pair of ribbed socks fits the bill. I can work on them without having to concentrate too much, other than paying a little attention while doing the heel. It's knitting on autopilot. Looking at my output for the last few months, I've been on autopilot a lot.
So it was with this latest pair. I meant to reverse the twist of the cable on the second sock, but because I was knitting on autopilot, I didn't remember that detail until I was halfway to the heel. Oh, well...
Autopilot Socks
Pattern: none
Yarn: Trekking XXL
Needles: US2 for cuff, US0 for the rest
Another cold front, another hat.
Pattern: Le Slouch (Wendy Bernard's Knit and Tonic blog)
Yarn: Plymouth Yarn's Baby Alpaca Brush in color 500 (black), ca. 160yds.
Needles: US7 and US8
Mods: Smaller gauge so I cast on a few more stitches, minor modifications to the crown shaping
The phone rang today, and when I checked the caller ID, it showed our name listing and number. Eyebrows raised, I answered. On the other end was a recorded female voice saying that our account had been locked because of potentially fraudulent activity identified by Central State Bank's fraud prevention department. It then gave the option of pressing 1 to unlock the account or pressing 2 to hear the recording again. Not sure that I heard it right the first time, especially the bank's name, I pressed 2. It played the same message. By now I had Egg listening in too, and he went ahead and pressed 1 to "unlock the account". When the recording asked that we enter our account number, we hung up, suspicions confirmed: phone phishing attempt.
I want to disinfect my phone now.
(That generic bank name was a nice touch. I googled it and found lots of banks with that as the base of their names, usually Central State Bank of Someplace.)
