A little mystery...

So, I have this yarn...

See, usually I'm very organized and I put all of my stash into Ravelry and keep ball bands and all that jazz, but this yarn has a story.

I acquired it sometime before October 11, 2006 when it first appeared in a picture of my sock stash for Socktoberfest.



Then it marinated for a while until I got into Ravelry and put it in my Ravelry stash, strangely using a different Flickr account than my normal one, on June 28, 2007. Apparently I created a second Flickr account in June of 2007, uploaded stash pics over a couple weeks, and completely forgot about it.*

*until tonight when I was going crazy trying to figure out the details of this yarn!

In the fall of 2008, I gave the yarn to my mom to start her second pair of socks and deleted it from my Ravelry stash.

Fast forward to December 2011, when my mom declares that she should knit a second pair of socks and I remind her that I gave her yarn and needles. She can't recall, and goes and finds the barely-started socks in a drawer. (Minus the ball band and any identifying yarn information, of course.)

She declares that she doesn't like the way they look and is going to go buy some other yarn, so I pull the socks-in-progress off the needles - of course she wanted to keep the needles! - and take them home to knit for myself.

This is all well and good, except for the fact that I have absolutely no idea what the yarn is. And, being me, this starts making me crazy when I try to put the project into Ravelry. So I spent several hours last night going through my blog archives and trying to find where I posted about the yarn, since I seem to recall that it was a gift. I never posted. But I did find the stash pic above which gave me a clue about when I got it.

Then while falling asleep I think that I wouldn't have deleted the stash pics from my Flickr. It popped into my head at knitting group, so tonight when I got home I went back through my Flickr archives trying to find the time when I was photographing my stash in the summer of 2007 shortly after getting into Ravelry... but I couldn't find it.

In fact, I came and started this blog post thinking I would beg for the help of the internet in identifying the yarn from that first crummy photo, when I suddenly thought "Hey, didn't I have a different Flickr name once?" and found it.



And those are the lengths I'll go to to solve yarn mysteries... knitting is so relaxing. ;)

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.

A post in Instagram photos (and one non)

Totally unrelated to knitting, I really like Instagram. You can take fun little square photos with your smartphone, apply various pictures, tag them with a location and post them to your twitter / Facebook / whatever.

I haven't been posting much because I've been hard at work designing and knitting secret things, but here's a bit of an update.

My new pattern, Isaz on Ravelry (linked) and Knit Picks IDP.



Last weekend I met my friend Nicole for brunch (and sadly not much knitting) but while I was waiting I got a hot chocolate and worked on the Ishbel that I'm knitting in ivory Handmaiden Sea Silk for my friend Christina's wedding that I'll be attending in mid-June.



Never fear, I am now well into the lace on this shawl, and I have until June 9th.

Today Nicole and Mimi and I went on a bit of the Puget Sound LYS Tour. Last year I did the whole thing (I believe last year it was 27 shops!) so this year I felt like I didn't need to try to do it all again. Instead we just hit some of the new shops we hadn't been to and a couple old favorites that aren't close to home, like this one in West Seattle.



One of the new shops, Serial Knitters in Kirkland, was really great! And they had star cookies, which is always a plus for me. ;)



So there you have it!

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. :)

LYS Tour 2010

Last weekend was the annual LYS Tour around here. The yarn stores band together, offer a free one skein pattern and a discount on the yarn to knit it, and us knitters run around crazily getting our passports stamped at the stores - 25 this year! It was my first year actually touring on the tour, since last year I attended every day at one store - the one where I worked. :)

Thursday night after work I headed to 4 of the stores that are more or less on my way home from work... Weaving Works, Bad Woman, Full Circle (this was a new one for me) and Fiber Gallery.

Friday I met up with a couple of friends and hit So Much Yarn on our way out to Bainbridge where we visited Churchmouse and had a lovely dinner at Cafe Nola.

We got to "ride" the scooter:







And then got totally soaked running to the ferry in the rain...



... while eating ice cream from Mora!



A lovely but very chilly evening.

The next day some of us joined a bunch of others for a trek northward to 11 yarn stores! One of the stores had some lovely knitfiti outside.



Amy knit most of Fay's socks on the drive:



After some dinner we took yet another ferry home.



Then on Sunday a few of us hit the remaining stores, where we found this hilarious Opal yarn:



An Austrian pop "singer", Antonia, wears a different slutty outfit on every ball band! We're not sure exactly who the target audience is for this yarn, but it was too hilarious to pass up, so a couple of us bought some:



(Click the first picture to enlarge for a view of more of the outfits!)

All in all an amazing weekend, now back to the secret knitting!

Listening to: The Outsider ~ A Perfect Circle, Reading In Bed ~ Emily Haines and the Soft Skeleton, Digital Bath ~ Deftones

Knitting in the media

Last night I was finishing up a pair of Monkeys (more on that later) while watching Frasier when I saw this:



Yep, that guy is "knitting" what appear to be crocheted granny squares. One would think that someone doing the show knew how to knit, because at one point the man is making fairly realistic knitting motions... but then again maybe not.

I posted something about this (but no picture) on Plurk and got a response from Aesox about a Jockey ad with a spinning wheel churning out knitting. The picture is a bit hard to see - it's possible it's just really thick yarn and someone jammed a cake of it on a spinning wheel, but it's hard to say.



These Jockey girls do a lot of things in their underwear, including riding horses. :o

I'm sure there are many other examples of failed representations of fiber arts - in fact I know I saw one a while ago with a ball of yarn tangled around some needles of someone who was supposedly "knitting".

In any case, back to those socks...



Pattern: Monkey by Cookie A
Yarn: Dream In Color Smooshy in Night Watch
Started: 11/23/09
Finished: 12/5/09

These originally started as the Hedgerow Socks, but it seemed like a lot of ribbing for not a lot of pretty. The pattern was just so plain, and it hurt my hands to be changing from knit to purl so much. I decided to go back to one of my old standbys - Monkey is such an easy pattern to knit. The pattern is easy to memorize and it's also easy to tell where you are in the pattern by looking at the stitches. Plus it's minimal work for what I think are very pretty socks.

I'm still knitting!

I knew it was time to blog when MJ asked "What, are you turning into me?" ;)

Yes, it is true. I haven't posted in almost an MJ-long time. First there was sock camp... for almost a whole week of 24/7 knitting-related vacation you would think I would have gotten more knitting in.

And I had a birthday...



At work I got a birthday fritter! (There are many reasons I love my job, and this is only one of them!) My family stopped by to say hi too, and then went to my apartment.



I came home to find these adorable star cakes and some balloons! It was a very nice birthday.

And then there has been secret (test and gift) knitting which I can't show, and I haven't finished anything. Well, that's sort of a lie. I did finish the lacy alpaca silk scarf that I was knitting at work, but it hasn't been blocked yet and it's for a store sample anyway.

Speaking of work, we are having a big sale this weekend so it's been pretty crazy. But it's still really fun. I'm just trying to restrain myself around all that yarn!

Listening to: Rusted Wheel ~ Silversun Pickups

Contest, and some more holiday knitting

Hey family members, are you still staying away from my blog? I sure hope so!

First off, the contest: I did not hear from Cindy so I've given up and I'm declaring a tie - Amanda from myonlysunshine and weezalana both guessed October 31st for the 100th sock finish. If the two of you could contact me I'll let you know the deal on your handknit-by-me socks. :)

In a bit of randomness, while I was visiting Cathy this weekend I finally remembered to take a picture of her ceiling. It is rather amazing.



It looks like someone went a little crazy with the spackle meringues and the glitter.

I didn't remember to get any pictures of Monkee's visit *or* me wearing my Rogue *or* WEBS *or* me wearing my York, however. (Yeah, I know, I am really bad at the picture taking thing.)

I have been doing some knitting - here's a holiday gift in progress:



I've still got a ways to go but... um... I'm flying on Friday, that gives me a lot of plane knitting time, right? (I have a feeling my mom might get half a stocking in a box.)

Listening to: Wrapped In Plastic ~ Marilyn Manson, Miss Murder ~ A.F.I.

Gift Knitting

I'm almost relieved that NaBloPoMo is nearly over. It's been fun, but it's also been a lot of pressure to knit interesting things to blog about. Well tonight I was knitting something interesting, but unfortunately it's a gift and not something I can share on the blog. But you'll see it later, really!

I'm actually having a tough time deciding between working on gifts and trying to get some of the WIPs taken off my long-ish list. I supposed the gifts will win, though. ;)

Back to that contest thing....

So remember back when I had the contest?

Right, well my sock knitting was not half as fast as most of you predicted, and I now know that the winner will be Cindy who guessed November 15th (the latest guess) - and she won't even be off by too much.

Unfortunately, Cindy is also unidentifiable - so if you're she could you please contact me?

Now, back to the sock knitting news. Actually the second half of my Thanksgiving extravaganza was pretty much knitting-free. I finished up those Monkey socks and cast on for the Ripples sock in Yarn Pirate Plum Gorgeous at the train station.

And *then*....

I went shopping, went out for coffee, walked around Greenlake with turtle hot chocolate from Chocolati, had deep philosophical discussions, ate Indian food, and did other assorted non-knitting things for the rest of the trip. And today on the plane? I read about 250 pages of The Time Traveler's Wife instead of knitting. (Shocking, I know.)

Listening to: Enjoy the Silence ~ Depeche Mode, Taking Over Me ~ Evanescence

Olympia, WA

Alphamonkey has a bad habit of visiting state capitals and not posing with the capital buildings, but he did see the Farmers Market complete with a big bell:



...and the fish ladder.



Aside from getting Alphamonkey ready to go and finishing the other Monkeys I didn't get too much knitting done on this trip. But tomorrow is another travel day, so we'll see!

Hanging in Portland

I'm still on my whirlwind travel around the west coast, but today was spent in Portland, then on the train to Olympia.

My little sister was nice to show me around Portland and oblige me by being the main sock photographer. Our first stop (after coffee) was the PGE faces.



Next we saw these adorable otters.



And then we hopped on a bus over to Hawthorne St.



We even found a very appropriate store there for Alphamonkey:



And after the train ride Alpha has someone to look up to - pair #98



Pattern: Monkey by Cookie A.
Yarn: Trekking XXL
Finished: 11/23/07

Sorry Z, I was originally only going to be around for a bit this afternoon but then I ended up coming last night.

Alpha has Thanksgiving!

I was afraid perhaps my family would think I was a little crazy bring a tourist sock to Thanksgiving, but instead they got really into it and even suggested things for Alpha to do during his stay.

While we cooked the dinner Alpha just relaxed by the fire:



Finally dinner was ready and we all sat down at the table.



We had a lovely dinner and Alpha got to have some of the pumpkin pie he was trying to steal earlier.

Today Alpha and I are in Portland, OR and I'm going to show him the town.

I also got some pictures of my mom knitting socks:




Listening to: O'Sailor ~ Fiona Apple

Alphamonkey Goes to the Beach!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!

A beachy interlude:



I'm writing from Arch Cape where Alphamonkey and I are spending Thanksgiving with my family.



Alphamonkey has been getting into trouble and stealing the pie.

And my room has this beautiful doorknob:



The first two photos were taken by my mom who is learning to knit socks now. I asked her to take a picture but she wanted to wait until she had more progress, so expect that one tomorrow.

Listening to: Muzzle ~ Smashing Pumpkins

Seattle

My first day here I went to breakfast, had coffee at the Panama Hotel (complete with a bit of knitting on the Monkey socks) and played at the park.

The park is one of my favorites and has some new stuff since I was there last.



I really liked these little chairs, and especially the way the light was hitting them.

And here's my current progress on the Monkeys. I'm about to leave for a long car trip so I'm sure more will get done then.



I probably won't post again til Friday but I'll write something tomorrow and save it til then.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Travel or It is still Tuesday in Seattle!

Today Alphamonkey joined me on a journey west. He was very excited (and slightly hopped up on caffeine) at the airport.



Yes, I have sunk to a new low and am blaming my frou-frou Starbucks beverage on a sock. I may need professional help.

After a loooong (6 hour) flight we are finally at our Seattle home where it is still Tuesday. I'm about ready to claim my bed back.




This does bring up an interesting question of what I will do about posting on Thursday and possibly Friday when I'll be without internet access. So here's a question - is it more cheating to post ahead or to write on the actual day and post it later?

Oh, wait, this is a knitting blog... I knit Alphamonkey's companion Monkey socks on the way here and got quite a bit done. I'm in the gusset with a predicted finish tomorrow.

Listening to: Warm Hands Cold Heart ~ 27

The Monkey Convention

Alphamonkey has been enjoying his stay in Boston and has been invited to many exciting events. The day today started with a bang as the first snowflakes were visible in the morning on his way to wait for me at work.

After work, however, he was excited to join the very exclusive First Annual Boston Monkey Convention.



While there he had the opportunity to meet another pair of Monkey socks-in-progress and some assorted other monkeys.

After the convention he experienced an intense sensation of personal growth.



Just as he thought it was about time to leave, he heard about this thing called "Thanksgiving" and "postal holiday" and he thought better of it. Instead he had the chance to travel across the US, visit the beach, and experience a real American Thanksgiving. He decided to stay on a few extra days.

Listening to: The Leaving Song Pt. 2 ~ A.F.I., Smile ~ Kitty F Band

Teaching Socks

Earlier this year I promised my mom I would teach her to knit socks next time we were together. My mom taught me to knit as a child and although she's knit many beautiful and intricate baby sweaters, she's never knit socks or used a circular needle - in fact I don't think she's even knit with DPNs.

Well, I'll be seeing her over Thanksgiving next week! I've decided to teach her Magic Loop since that's my preferred method, but I probably won't show her two at once - at least not the first time. I was reminded last night when knitting on Alphamonkey how awkward I find DPNs. (No offense to all of you DPN lovers out there, it's just not my thing!)

Or maybe I should bring both options for my mom... thoughts?

Anyway, it gave me a good excuse to buy yarn, and to buy yarn that I probably wouldn't buy for myself.



I chose Mountain Colors Bearfoot in Ruby River because I thought a slightly heavier weight yarn would be good for time purposes. My mom likes red (one of my least favorite colors) and I'd been admiring this yarn for a while. I wouldn't want it myself, but even I could tell that it was a beautiful color! You'll have to take my word on this one because the above picture is the best I could get - with daylight savings time I never get home before dark to take photos.

In totally non-knitting news, stariPod lives! Yes, my blue iPod mini is alive again. I was very attached to it, but when the battery went I got a blue nano. However, stariPod was still sitting on my desk so when I heard about buying a new battery online I decided to give it a shot. Well it arrived today and it took me about a half hour from opening the package and reading through the instructions to having my iPod back together with the new battery. I think stariPod is back. :)

Plugging away...

So, how's NaBloPoMo going for you? It's hard for me to say if it's a good or bad thing just yet - I'm not finding it too difficult to blog every day since I *do* knit every day, I just hope it isn't too boring for the readers!

Today was actually somewhat eventful in my knitting world. I got my Ravelry T-shirt:



See, now you know what gauge is for Ravelry. ;)

I baked some banana bread:



And I knit on some neglected WIPs. Clementine and Madder Rib, to be exact. Here's my measly progress on Madder Rib:



Pan likes to help by inspecting the items being photographed.

The yarn, Fabel, was a gift from my fab SP jochibi.*

See, the thing is, I don't really like ribbing. (Yes, I know I just knit an entire sweater in 2x2 rib.) I think this pattern will turn out well in this yarn, but I don't enjoy the actual process of knitting the ribbing much. I often get the urge to cast something on, start it, and then leave it lying around in a sock bag on the top of my dresser stalled at the ribbing, like I did with these guys. Unfortunately for them, they're *entirely* ribbing. I started them in October but then got sidetracked with the Frankensocks and the Secret Spook socks.

* Funny thing... I was looking back at that post from when I first got the Fabel yarn and I realized I had written about buying thread to sew my Spork. Well today I actually did some of the sewing on Spork too! I need to locate the bag that contains the straps and clippies to hold the flap closed, but I had the bag itself with the shoulder strap and I sewed the ends of that strap together and sewed them to the sides of the bag so the Spork is now usable.



It's a little smaller than I thought it would be, which may be due to the felting - I didn't use the same yarn as specified in the pattern - and it's also a little more floppy than I'd like. Although, after the success of helping Rachel line her bag and my recent experiences with sewing on my knitted items, maybe I'll line it...

But, at any rate, it's a very good pattern and produces an adorable bag. It would also be really easy to size up or down, or to change the shape, just by doing some simple math.