A fibery adventure!

First off, about the last post on Sock Wars. Just to clarify I was not suggesting that the original Sock Wars be changed, I just got to thinking about it and, the obsessive person I am, couldn't stop. And I know it's not supposed to be "fair", that is probably the wrong world. I guess what I really meant was to make an incentive to be fast and speedy. But to those of you who liked my ideas, thanks!

And now for my adventure:

On Friday night I made some bread to take to my Saturday Fibery Adventure. The recipe said two loaves, and although I am a fairly experienced baker, I trusted it even when it looked like not much batter. They must have meant mini-loaves because I ended up with oddly shaped bread.



It still tasted good, though!

At about 8am yesterday Bryghtrose picked me up to head over to enallagma9's house in central Massachusetts.

There we checked out her new wheel, spun some, ate BBQ lunch, and generally had fun. She has a new Louet wheel, and I brought my Kromski. Bryghtrose has a Babe.



Her coworker was also there, although she doesn't spin. She was knitting a beautiful lacey sweater, and finished knitting it while we were there. In the afternoon we got some ice cream, visited the LYS, and went swimming in the lake where I was attacked by a leech! I've never actually seen a leech before, although this one was admitedly very tiny and didn't actually manage to suck my blood. Still, it was an exciting moment.

We returned to the house and spun some more (excuse the beach hair!)



When we were all testing out the Louet we used various kinds of roving and I was rather pleased with the resulting yarn, so I decided to make my own "party yarn".



Bryghtrose and I stopped for dinner on the way home. When I got home at about 10pm I was totally exhausted, but very pleased with our amazing day!

Sock Wars

I saw a post about this on the Knittyboard and was suddenly obsessed.

Sock Wars

The Rules
1. The first rule of Sock Wars is, you must talk about Sock Wars
2. The second rule of Sock Wars is, you MUST talk about Sock Wars. (no really, for this to be a success we need as many combatants as possible)
3. Two socks to a fight
4. One fight at a time
5. No shirts, no shoes, just socks
6. Fights will go on as long as they have to
7. If this is your first time in Sock Wars, you have to fight.

I think I'm going to join. I think I have to. However, I have become totally obsessed with how to make a "fair" version of Sock Wars. Not that they should change it, but in theory. If you're a knittyboarder it's in the post linked above, but otherwise copied and pasted here for your convenience:

First: We decided (Polarg and Bryghtrose and I, at knitting group) that to make it truly "fair" it would have to be a local event, that would take care of the "what if I ship mine to Australia and while they're in transit my knitter from the next state over "kills" me?" issue.

An alternative to making it local would be to announce when you have mailed the socks (showing a photo or scan of a receipt with zip code or customs form) and have the target be "killed" then.

Second: Find a way to make you less vulnerable once you kill your target. So, say, if I finish my socks then the person knitting for me must not work on my socks for 2 days (or some other reasonable time period) so that the fact that I'm knitting quickly is actually a benefit. Of course if there is shipping involved this would be much more difficult because at that time I'm waiting for my new target's socks to be shipped to me.

As I'm reading the rules, killing your target does nothing to "save" you unless you're paired off (and it doesn't sound like that since your target has to pass on their target's socks, and those are presumably not for you).

Third: The list of who is knitting for who should be public, which will allow people to for alliances to kill their enemies.

So if I'm knitting for my target Suzy, but she's knitting for my greatest enemy Bob and is *almost* done, I could knit the socks slowly until she sends hers to Bob, thus making sure that Bob's socks don't have to take a journey and give him more time.

Ok, it's obvious I've thought too much about this. ;)

My poor neglected blog!

First off, socks #16:



These socks are just simple stockinette, in old Lorna's Laces Bee Stripe yarn. How do I know it's old? Well because the labels are different, of course. ;) Also you may notice some light spots on the left sock above - not your imagination, there were actually little bits of white in one of the skiens.

These also demanded to be my project for A Passage to India which I read for Knit the Classics. There are several mentions of wasps in the book, which made these socks oddly appropriate.

In additional knitting news, there has been slow but sure progress on a lot of things recently. I've been pretty busy but I've still managed to do a lot of knitting - much of it on the above socks which are really tall.

Test Knit Socks - #15

Things have been a little quiet on the blog lately because I've been doing some test knitting. The most recent was a pair of socks, which I finished yesterday. I can't show you everything, but so you believe me:

Cuffs:


Feet:


Now it's back to work on WIP management!

My Amazing SP7 Strikes Again!

I returned home last night to find this waiting for me:



In this second great package I found (roughly L to R, top to bottom):

a bar of Green & Blacks Dark Almond chocolate
a little plush sheep which is also a zipper pouch
some gorgeous sock yarn from Curious Yarns in the Gothic colourway
a felted mouse for my furry sidekicks
Marmite :P biscuits
a little tin containing the most adorable blue and white ceramic animal stitch markers
and two cards

The first is a blank card for me to use (or more likely frame and hang on my wall) which, as you can probably see, says "Socks, Drugs, and Rock 'n' Roll, Baby" Now really, how appropriate is that? (Minus the drugs, of course!) The second sheepy card is a note from my SP.

Thank you SP for this truly amazing package!

Some of you may have noticed that my SP seems to have gotten the point that I am madly in love with sock yarn, as both of my packages have contained beautiful sock yarn. :) Now I'm just glad that my SP accepts my obsession instead of thinking it's unhealthy and trying to go against it by sending me buckets of Fun Fur.

Socks #14 - Hedera

I actually finished these a while ago, but I couldn't find my sock blockers because of *the big move* and so I didn't photograph them until now.



Pattern: Hedera
Started: 5/12/06
Finished: 7/1/06

Although I complained to my knitting group that these socks were taking forever, this was largely because I was knitting other deadline projects at the time. In fact I really enjoyed the pattern and might knit another pair as a gift sometime!

As for my lack of posts with knitting content lately, I'm knitting on yet another test knit project which is taking up a lot of time at the moment. Things should return to semi-normal relatively soon.

100% of two cats surveyed prefer sock yarn from Slovakia!

BOSTON, MA 7/9/06

In a survey of two American cats today, 100% of cats surveyed preferred Slovakian sock yarn (Sockenwolle Unipo) to American sock yarn (Socks That Rock). This surprising result can perhaps be attributed to the amazing goodies surronding the sock yarn from Slovakia. These extras included candy like toffee, fruit flavored vitamin drops, fruit flavored fizzy candy, and even some beautiful pink star beads.

An inside source hinted that the respondants may have been bribed with catnip, but this claim has not been verified.

Thanks to Gimme Your Stuff I arranged a swap for some beautiful sock yarn from Slovakia. Eva sent me pictures of a bunch of available colors and I picked these two. The shipping was surprisingly fast! I got the package earlier this week but didn't have time to take the picture until now.

Thanks again Eva!