Hitting the sock wall?

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.]

Just when you think...

Sunday things were starting to get back to normal - no more visiting relatives, we set the corner of the house down on its lovely new concrete footing, I finished the Trampoline socks, I met the girls for a sip-n-knit at Starbuck's - and then I got smacked with cold from HELL on Sunday night. So I've been coughing, sniffling and nursing an on-and-off fever for the last three days, and I've reached the grumpy/whiny stage.

The socks are pretty cool, though. The colorway is sort of an underwater camouflage. There's a green fleck in it that doesn't come through in the picture. Too bad the yarn (Trampoline from Skacel) is discontinued. Skacel seems to introduce and discontinue yarns as fast as Mikasa does china patterns. If I had to do them over again, I'd go down a needle size, from US 2 to US1.

I also made a little progress on the top-down cardi before the plague struck. The sleeves are done, and that's where I blended in the new yarn with the old and harvested as much old yarn as possible for finishing out the body. The colorway has changed a bit in the last 4-5 years (no surprise there), but I think it'll be ok having it concentrated in the sleeves and probably some attached i-cord edging.

Having finished the Trampoline socks, I needed a next portable project. Taking a little break from socks, I cast on for the Scotch Thistle Lace Stole using the skein of Schaefer Yarns "Anne" in a lovely autumny colorway. It was a gift from my friend and almost-neighbor Barbara - so thoughtful! Not that you can really tell much from the picture (unblocked lace looks more like a dishrag than anything else), but even this little bit is working up so prettily that I'm forgiving the yarn for having been such a bitch to wind.

Serendipity

Egg linked me to an article about how it has been scientifically proven that men just don't get or utterly misinterpret non-verbal flirty signals from women. Does that really surprise anyone? Anyone female, that is? Then within an hour I stumbled across this delightful reply. (found on a random blog, originally from the PostSecret project)

I'm just not feeling very yarny the last few days since finishing the wavy socks. I ripped out the toe-up Monkey socks in the loud colorway of Wildfoote last night - the pattern completely disappeared into the riot of competing colors in the yarn. Anything beyond a simple rib is wasted there.

So, it's Knit Nite in a few hours at my LYS, and I have nothing on the needles. All my projects of late have been accessories or other little things (OK, so the entrelac bag isn't little), and I'm jonesing to do a garment again, just can't seem to find the right pattern. Sigh... Spring fever sucks.

One step forward, two steps back

Yep, I ripped the socks back to the toe last night, and no, not because of the color oddness. 1) They were a little too big, and 2) these are my first toe-up socks that I want to do with a heel flap instead of a short row heel, and I started the gusset increases too late. They were going to be huge! Now, after the do-over part, they're looking much better. I've got the first one done to the leg shaft and am starting the gussets (again) on the second.

Yesterday down at my LYS where I help out some, I had a terrific teaching experience. My student already knew the knit stitch and had made a few garter stitch scarves, but purling had eluded her, and she struggled with gauge. When she signed up for the class, she also mentioned that she has a chronic autoimmune disorder that somewhat affects her dexterity on one side and her concentration, which things like knitting help maintain. Talk about a great motivation, aside from the sheer pleasure of working with nice yarn! We started on a basket weave scarf, and she picked everything up very quickly: long tail cast-on, the previously elusive purl stitch, reading her work to know where she was in the pattern repeat... All well and good, and what made it really fun for me, other than that she got it so fast, was her delight in the results. The purl stitch opened up a whole new world of possibilities! I'm quite sure she could have fought her way to learning to purl on her own, but it is gratifying to think that I helped make that process less painfully trial and error.

Looking out my window toward the wooded area that is our back yard this morning, I watched an enormous chipmunk thudding his way along a small downed tree trunk headed for the the spot below the bird feeder. Obesity is not just a human problem - all those spilled sunflower seeds have done their work for that (not so) little rodent to look as fat and happy as he does in the middle of winter (such as it is here in Alabama).

Hand painted yarn = surprises

Sometimes the basics come back to bite you. In this case, it's the tendency of multicolored yarns to "pool" colors when they are knitted. I know this happens, have had it happen before, and know that you are supposed to work alternating rows/rounds from two different skeins to prevent this, but, sheesh, what a pain in the ass on what is supposed to be a quick pair of toe-up socks! So, let the colors pool - it's a pair of bed socks for my mother anyway!

When I pulled the yarn out of the stash last night and got started, I honestly didn't remember buying the yarn, but I must have had her in mind as the eventual intended recipient, because the colors are not me. However, this is one of the few cases where I have been surprised by something in the stash, which says something considering the quantity of yarn in there. I embarrassed myself a little when I started listing the particulars in my Ravelry notebook - somehow it doesn't look so scary in person (all nice and tidy in bins) than it does when listed out there for all to see.