Monkeys for Marti

I talked before about yarn that just seems to be cursed. My Solstice yarn was like that until I recently made the plain stockinette twin socks with MJ.

Well, I've cured another cursed yarn! On our last knitting adventure afternoon at Neptune Coffee, Marti ripped out the second pair of socks that weren't working with this yarn and gave it to me. After finishing a few projects I cast on for some Monkey socks - seriously, that pattern looks good with almost anything!

Today we were back at Neptune knitting, and I presented her with the no-longer-cursed yarn... but it looked like this:



Yarn: Socks That Rock in Lucy
Pattern: Monkey by Cookie A
Started: 7/3/10
Finished: 7/23/10

And they even fit!

Now for my next STR project - it takes up a good portion of my stash, so it makes sense that I should be knitting something with it most of the time. Erin and I have several unknit kits from past years of the Rockin' Sock Club. I made a goal to knit all of them by November 2011 (if the deadline seems weird, it's for my 101 in 1001 project).

Well, today I'm starting Leafling.

Listening to: The Promise of Deceit ~ Katatonia, Lithium ~ Nirvana

The Point

See, I'm knitting these socks...

They're in a merino / tencel 50:50 blend so the yarn is a bit grabby, and there are some interesting stitch manipulations required. Because of this I need pointy but slippery needles. Apparently that's not easy to find.

Above we have a bunch of my 2.25mm sock needles.

On the far right are the Knit Picks circulars, which are the pointiest by far but unfortunately much too grabby. At least in my hands, the finish wears off these needles pretty quickly - you can see some gold showing through in the top of the picture - and once the needles are dull silvertone / goldtone the stitches are really hard to move along them.

Moving to the needle 2nd from the right, you see a pair of Hiya Hiya steel needles. These are some of my favorites because they're nice and slippery and pretty pointy - but in this case not *quite* pointy enough.

The next one to the left is an Addi Turbo. Strangely it seems to be about the same pointiness as the Hiya Hiya needle - but not pointy enough. Nice and super slippery though!

And on the far left, we have my brand new Addi Lace needle. These are unfortunately not as slippery as the regular Addis, which caused me to agonize about whether it was worth buying them. I had a pair years ago, but my skin and the brass didn't get along and the needles would get very tarnished and smell funny, so I ended up giving them to a friend. I'd heard that they have a new coating and hoped this would help with that issue. So far so good - they're certainly pointy enough.

And now some other socks I'm knitting, these ones out of my handspun. They also happen to be on my very favorite type of sock knitting needle: Inox Express. Unfortunately they come in 2.5mm but not 2.25mm. The perfect blend of slippery and pointy, but alas, not the right size.



These socks were supposed to be knit on my Boston to Seattle cross-country move in the U-Haul, but unfortunately due to a last minute packing mishap (my designated container of things to come with me in the truck cabin accidentally got put in a box and packed in the back) that was not to be. It's a little sad that it has taken me this long to get going on them!

Listening to: The Drapery Falls ~ Opeth

Catch Up

I am apparently a bad blogger. I had no idea it had been more than a month, and I have no excuse since I have not one but *two* finished pairs of socks to share! I've also been busy with some secret knitting, but you won't see that for a while.

Well, let's get to it. MJ and I decided on something simple for our next pair of twin socks - I talked about them a while back. Our goal was to finish them by the summer solstice. Unfortunately, some secret knitting got in the way for me, but I was close.



Yarn: Yarn Pirate BFL Sock in Solstice
Started: 5/4/10
Finished: 6/27/10

The next simple socks in line were my Spring Trek socks. I was inspired by my plain stockinette Trekking birthday socks from a couple years back, and this yarn was my very first Trekking - a gift from my mom years ago.



Yarn: Trekking XXL in color 68
Started: 4/24/10
Finished: 7/3/10

I finished them while I was at the Oregon Coast with my family for the 4th of July weekend. I spent some time knitting and some time on the beach. On the 4th the tide was quite low in the middle of the day, so I went for a walk with my sisters.

I was trying to take a picture of this exposed rock when a wave started coming and I ran so I wouldn't get my shoes wet. As I was running, something fell out of my pocket. My first thought was "Oh no! My phone!" but thankfully it was not my phone - instead it was my camera. I had a horrible sinking feeling as the wave washed over my camera and then I realized... it's waterproof up to 10 feet.

Apparently Olympus doesn't lie! This picture was taken about 1 minute after a salty ocean wave washed over my camera. It's still working great. :)