Hedera, Spinning, and the Road to the Summit!

I finished my first KAL with the 52 Pair Plunge group, Hederaesque:



Pattern: A modified version of Hedera
Yarn: Cavyshops Merino Fingering in Tea Party
Started: 7/1/11
Finished: 7/24/11

A pretty pathetic start, but my July knitting was seriously hampered by my participation in Tour de Fleece.

I finished a skein of BMFA in Little Bunny Foo Foo:



And started some lovely Cloudlover superwash BFL in Hoarfrost:



These past few weeks I've spun more than I had in the past year! (And there's the knitting lull to show for it.)

In addition, I've been preparing for my trip to Sock Summit with a very important task... sock laundry.



The bottom half of the drying rack is hidden behind a table and out of the picture. So yeah, I have a lot of handknit socks. Obviously I won't be able to wear (or even bring!) them all to Sock Summit, but I figured it was as good a reason as any to take a picture of all my clean socks.

Girasole and Spinning

A friend was out of town and I was taking care of her plants, so I took the opportunity to block Girasole in a cat-free location.



I'm happy with it, but I have no idea how I'm going to use it now that it's done. I'm not really a shawl person... I wore my Milkweed to Madrona with a little pin as a scarf-like thing, but that isn't really going to work with Girasole since it's circular. But I'm still glad that I made it - it's definitely the most genuine lace project that I've done so far.

After finishing Girasole I immediately embarked upon the 52 Pair Plunge and Tour de Fleece almost all at once. I've been knitting mostly on Hedera-esque:



And spinning quite a bit. First up is a 4oz superwash merino braid labeled only "Greek Isles". I'm sure I bought it at a fiber festival - most likely Rhinebeck, but I have no idea where it's from.



The skein on the left hadn't been washed when the picture was taken, but now it's fluffed up and looks a lot like the one on the right.

Then I moved on to some BMFA fiber (a Sheep to Shoe kit) in Little Bunny Foo Foo:



So far I'm really enjoying getting back to spinning!

Get out the super glue

I have finished an epic WIP, Girasole, but I don't have decent pictures yet. A full post about it will come when it's blocked, but for now, here's a teaser:



Now, as for the title of today's post... I'm going to whine a bit.

I was so very excited for the Kollage Square Circular needles to come out in sock sizes with cables that weren't a string. I love knitting magic loop, but the original cable was *so* flexible (really basically a string) that I never bought any after trying a friend's needles.

Well, after preordering and waiting for a backorder I finally got my needles - a pair each of 40" circular needles in 2.25 and 2.5mm. I enjoyed working with them, but the 2.25mm needle had a weird join - the metal was crimped out a bit at the join and snagged the yarn. I emailed Kollage, and they were very nice about replacing my needle.

Last night I opened up the replacement 2.25mm needle and started a pair of socks - the join is fine. :) Then when cleaning my desk I picked up some socks on the old needle, which I had stopped working on because of the annoying join, and the cable fell out of the needle when I picked them up. Hrm... probably because of the wonky join.

Well, apparently not because as I was working on the pair of socks from last night on the new needle, the cable popped out on that one too! Keep in mind I've only used these needles for about 1 hour last night, and maybe 15 minutes this morning before the join broke.

Guess it's time to get the super glue.