Binge Weekend

Ha bet that got ya wondering. It sure has taken me a long time to recover from this last weekend. Much fun was had.

Sat May 3rd I went to the Maker Faire in San Mateo and finally got to hear Stephanie Pearl-McPhee speak. Proof:
I think my favorite bit (after the knitters aren't patient people, knitting creates an artificial patience zone around them bit) was when she enacted the "what do they expect" reaction of a sock knitter to being told one can buy them for a dollar a pair. If I thought I was a tenth the actress I would so totally do that if someone ever said that to me. Oddly, they don't. Possibly I look armed and dangerous?

Somehow I managed to completely miss that there was yarn to buy at the Maker Faire. Can you even imagine how dumb I feel about that?

Sunday May 4th I drove up to Sacramento to spend the day at the CNCH market. I didn't make it to the galleries because as usual I was having too much fun at the market. Next year I really do have to have my act together enough to attend the full conference. Since I didn't know there was yarn to buy at the Maker Faire I let myself go a bit wilder at CNCH than I otherwise might have.

Some of my goodies from shopping the CNCH market this year. Clockwise from upper left.

Tactile Fiber Arts bag.
Polworth roving from Rovings in Canada a lovely silver grey. Unfortunately I don't get to keep the whole bag. I have to split it with my friend.
Polworth/silk 80/20 fingering yarn (800+ yards of it!) also from Rovings with which I am going to make myself a lovely lovely shawl someday (soon I hope).
A book full of cool charted motifs. I haven't done color-work but I was incapable of resisting the title.
A Kumihimo plate which I will share with my daughter if we are both good.
Tactile Fiber Arts Carbonized Bamboo roving - who could resist?
Tactile Fiber Arts Merino/Bamboo/Nylon blend Sock yarn

I may have gotten a little more spinning fiber and another book or two and maybe another skein or so of yarn, but I'm taking the fifth on that for now. Brooke of Tactile Fiber Arts also let me try out the little Victoria wheel they had in the booth and I'm sorely tempted. It looks like it might almost fold up small enough to be carry on luggage. One could spin on the plane. (swoons with delight - imagine the reactions) I wouldn't really care if they told me I had to put my knitting away so that my needles didn't accidentally fly out of my hands and impale someone if I could pull out the wheel instead. (Trust me, if someone is impaled with one of my needles it's unlikely to be an accident. But just try to take my artificial patience generator (or my chocolate) away and see what happens.)

And in addition to all the loveliness (admitted and stealth) I also ended up with this:

Tactile Fiber Arts naturally dyed Merino/Tencel roving

I gave Yarnivorous (a fellow Ravelry member with a great blog title/rav-name) a ride up to CNCH and was rewarded all out of proportion. After all, the car was going whether she was in it or not. But as I dropped her off at the end of the day she gave me this lovely Tactile Fiber Arts merino/tencel roving and since I hate that thing where you stand there for 20 minutes, one of you pressing something on the other one, and the other demurring, I gave in after a couple of attempts at dissuading her from rewarding me so out of proportion to what I had done. I still feel guilty about it though. So I haven't given up hope yet of evening the scales eventually. She got a gorgeous gorgeous fleece there which I hope she'll blog about soon. She gave me quite a nice sample of it too and really that would have been more than ample reward for driving. It might just be the closest I've seen to my ideal for my fantasy sweater project. Which I'm not ready to buy yet but having a sample that is close will help immensely when I am ready to buy.

Oh, and lest ye think it is all buy and no use here (and you could be forgiven for thinking so) here's the latest bit of the Zazzlejeans cardigan.
Uh, I started playing with the toys in my new iPhoto. I'm so easy to amuse...

No, it's not a puff sleeve, I was just too lazy to figure out how to smooth it to look nice all by my lonesome since my first try knocked three stitches off the needle.

Oh yeah, and I finally finished the Slippin' Slidin' socks from round three of Sock Madness 2.
Those are my feet but they also fit the Remembrall so she's already wheedled them out of me. On the plus side she should be able to wear them for a while since our feet are not much more than an inch apart in length. (She's 9 should I worry that I'll be knitting socks for skis by the time she's a teenager or is that normal?) They are very stretchy socks and very nice in that yarn so I am going to have to make myself another pair.

I signed up for the 52 pair plunge (also the summer of socks and who knows what) after looking, really looking at the size of my sock yarn stash. Plus, you know, I want the socks durn it.

Whiskey Tango Wednesday*

The other day the FoUI and I had to run out to the grocery at the last minute because we were out of milk (this is a tragedy of epic proportions around here) we arrived less than a half hour before closing and the parking lot was pretty near empty so we parked in the spot closest to the doors and headed in. When we came out again (with our milk, and naturally some chocolate) there was a car stopped in the middle of the parking lot aisle. We crossed as fast as we could but the car just sat there. The FoUI said, "he's vultching** our spot." And idea which I pooh poohed. But chalk one up to my DH because once we had pulled out of the spot and gotten out of the way the other car did indeed park in the spot we had come out of. The lot was nearly empty, people, not a single other car in the whole aisle, left or right. Nor one in the next aisle either.

That little "whiskey tango" moment, courtesy of the driver that had to have the exactly perfect spot and only the exactly perfect spot, got me thinking about my own whiskey tango behaviour vis-a-vis perfection. To avoid going on too long here I'll limit it to my behaviour as regards knitting. I have a lot of yarns I haven't knit up because I feel a need to use the "exact perfect" pattern for them. Likewise I have a lot of patterns for garments I'd like to have but I'm either still hunting for the "exact perfect" yarn or I am waiting for my physique to become the "exact perfect" one for the pattern. That last is hopeless so you'd think I'd stop thinking like that but I still catch myself thinking "when I've lost weight" or "when I'm in better shape".

Whiskey tango? It's knitting! If I don't like the way a pattern is fitting/knitting up/looking in that yarn, I can just rip it back out. It's not paint or ink where I've used it and I can't pull it back off the paper/canvas. It's not even like fabric where once I've cut the pieces I can only make something I can get out of the smaller sizes of fabric I now have. Unless I've steeked (or am using frog-resistant yarn) I have great long swaths of raw material easily reclaimed for another go.

So all that time I've spent looking for the exact right yarn for a project (cough Mystic Light cough) or the exact right pattern for a yarn (cough pretty near all my sock yarns cough) is time I could have been knitting, and yeah maybe sometimes ripping the project. But since it's fairly likely that through the law of averages, if nothing else, I'd have eventually managed to knit something that was a keeper on the first go, that means I'd have more knitted items to wear if I just jumped into the deep end instead of doing this toe-tip-dip dance I've been doing.

What's funny is that I often do jump into the deep end. Even in crafts. But in more theoretical ways perhaps. I'll decide I'm going to try something and off I'll go diving into the middle of whatever it is.

I need to embrace the experiential. So, May will be about doing a possible option without worrying about finding the perfect option. Maybe I'll get more knitting done.

I'm between computers at the moment (minor drama involving the laptop acting like it was gonna croak has at last gotten me going on moving everything over to the new iMac but it's slow going) so no photos today but I do have a FO or two to show you next time. Which I hope will be sooner rather than later.

*I don't suppose it will be every Wednesday but on a semi-regular basis I think Wednesdays will be for "what was I/she/he/it thinking?" posts.

** I don't really have to explain "vultching" do I?

And I'm out...

Well, I came close but I'm out of the competition now for Sock Madness2. As of the time the 12th place finisher in my division posted their photo I was not quite to here:

Missed it by that much!

(Please excuse the ugly toes - I usually wear socks well into May so don't need to worry about pedicures. Maybe I should get one... For sure before I do any more partial sock photos.)

The FoUI* and I have already had our post-mortem and have a better plan of attack for next year. In the mean time I now get to knit the rest of these socks, and the future patterns in a much more leisurely way. I've had a lot of fun competing but I think really, I'm at least as much relieved as disappointed if not more so. I know the FoUI is more disappointed than I am which is super sweet of him.

I'm off to chill out for a bit now. I'll be back with other knitting in a couple of days.

*The Fount of Useless Information aka my DH. Also known by the longer name "The FoUIaaP" (The Fount of Useless Information and also Puns) at times. He really does know all sort of random, generally useless, info. It comes in handy every now and again though. The puns, not so much...

Blogging Dragnet Style

Quick, "just the facts, Ma'am" update:

I'm still, still knitting socks. I got the flu from the kid who got it from her piano teacher. I got over the flu just in time.

I finished the Reversai in time to make it into Round 3 of Sock Madness.
Gave them to my Mom (that's her in the photo - well her feet).

Round three is a fantastic sock knit in two strands of laceweight and if/when the pattern becomes available I highly recommend it. These are gonna be seriously comfy socks.
I've done the heel turn on both socks but I don't have time to take another photo. I don't have time to do this post even but I'm way over due for one.

Ok, Gotta get back to knitting now. Catch ya later!

Still Madly Knitting Socks

Round 2's pattern came out yesterday so I've been madly knitting socks while trying not to succumb to the stomach flu that my daughter had last week (over spring break - how unfair is that? poor little Remembrall).

It's a clever completely reversible sock so I suspect strongly I'll be making it again in a size that will fit me rather than my mum.

Progress only at this point. But my competitive streak means I won't be blogging or blog reading for that matter until they are done or I'm out.

This is a very stretchy sock.

the sock on me (size 7.5 wide at the front narrow at the heel try finding that in a shoe)

the sock on the FoUI (6'2" nearly 200lbs size 11 1/2 feet although admittedly, narrow)

Other activity in the interim is either stealth knitting or boring so I'll not subject you to it. Besides, I've got to get back to knitting. There were people who finished in just over 15 hours clock time!

A Sign of the Coming Apocalypse?

I finished my socks for the first round of Sock Madness 2 Sunday night at just before 10pm. And in sign either of the coming destruction or that I really should just concentrate better, I finished in time to move on to the next round in Sock Madness 2 and in the first half of the pack to boot. This puzzles me no end when I think how long it has taken me to knit other socks. But on the other hand if I can keep it up, maybe it really is possible to knit through my existing fingering weight sock stash before I die.

Here's my socks:

Yarn: Blue Moon Fiber Arts Socks That Rock in Smoky Blue overdyed with red
Pattern: Zombie Socks by Sheryl Giles
Clock time to finish: approx 84 hours
Actual knitting time rough estimate: not more than 40 hours - not sure though, I forgot to time it. Doh!

I started with some Socks That Rock lightweight in Smoky Blue earmarked as a possible for the "moody" sock.
But then a couple of days before the pattern was released we got some more clues. "Scary", "Michael Jackson's Thriller", and something about Buffy the Vampire Slayer, something like that Faith might wear them but Buffy - not so much.

So I decided to try overdying the yarn with red to get the deep dark purple of the scary night from the red on the blues and the various reds of drying blood from the red on the cream to browns. I suspect I just didn't use enough dye because while it looked good in the skein...
And the cake...

In the socks it's a bit pink in places - especially where it pools. But looks very very nice in others.

I may overdye it again to see if I can get closer to my original vision. But for now I have some super comfy socks. I highly recommend this pattern if/when it becomes available to the general public. It's pretty easy to knit but with the dropped stitches it is fun and interesting.

I'd still be knitting and unlikely to be far enough along to move on to round two if it hadn't been for the FoUI's enthusiastic support. He helped out with all the round the house stuff and the child wrangling so I had more time to knit.

One needs to be careful what one jokes about around here, though. A couple of days before the competition started I made a joke at dinner that the only way I'd manage to move up from the first round to the second would be if I didn't even waste time on eating or drinking. But that I'd die without water so I'd need one of those beer hats to hold cups of water. The FoUI pointed out that I'd knit faster on coffee and joked that he'd even sacrifice by refilling coffee mugs (he's very anti-coffee) but I was still surprised (and amused & touched) by how far he took the joke. A box arrived at the house just in time for the leg of the first sock...

I have the best husband in this world and any other with intelligent life.

Part way along I must have pinched a nerve somewhere because my right hand went numb sometime Saturday and it's still doing more tingling than feeling normal. I'll have to do something about that if it doesn't stop soon. Next year I must remember to get into training sooner.

In the middle of the Madness I got the most awesome package from sweet sweet April at The Weaving Inn. I'd won a contest on her blog and just look at all the lovelies she sent me.

Thank you so very very much April and I'm so sorry that I didn't blog this right away. I was certain that if I did anything but knit straight through I'd never make it into the next round so I didn't even let myself do blog reading or writing for fear of "missing by that much". I adore the little stitch marker holder and the only way I'm gonna get to hold onto it and the cute Ladybugs tape measure (which matches very nicely with the Knitter's bag I got at Stitches West this year) is by letting my daughter have the adorable little Bella doll. She ain't gettin' that yarn though. Grrrr. Mine. Grrrr. If you're reading this and you haven't seen April's blog run right over. She's great fun to read. And a super nice person as well.

Now that I'm waiting for round two I have started the FoUI's well deserved next pair of socks. Plain stockinette in Yarn Nerd 1200MHz BFL in Tour de France.
If that's not loud enough for him I may have to start searching for indie dyers who dye yarn you can see from space.

I'm also starting a third swatch for the Zazzlejeans cardi. If the size 8 Harmony Options don't get me gauge I'll break down and do the math for which ever needle I like the fabric best off of.

It is official - I am insane

I can't keep up with my knitting queue already. So why I would do this is clearly something I ought to be working through with a trained professional. But do it I did. I signed up for...
Yup, I'm going to be competitively knitting socks. Go ahead and laugh. I'll wait. I know it'll take a while. It does when I think about it too.

Got your breath back? Good. So anyway, I'm not quite halfway to ready for the starting gun and the first pattern comes out on the 13th. I may already be in trouble. I picked yarns. Lots of yarns. And I wound them into cakes. So now I've got single cakes (for the most part - except for the Claudia's and the laceweights - yup laceweight for socks - I told you I was insane, although in fairness to me I didn't learn about the laceweight until after I'd signed up but not one to back away from a challenge I got some).
Lots of cakes. But I need to split the cakes into even halves so I can knit both socks at once if I so choose. But I want to keep them joined so that in case I end up not using a yarn for Sock Madness and decide it wants to be a scarf I don't have to rejoin the yarn. So I have this clever plan to rewind the cakes into a pair of cakes. Wind half from the inside and then the other half from the outside. The drawback of course, is that for at least some yarns, if not all, I will end up with fraternal twins because the color changes of the variegates will be reversed. But realistically speaking, this is unlikely to be a serious issue since I'm unlikely to make it much past the first cut if that far. And at that point, though I'll keep knitting along for the fun I won't be racing so much that I can't cut and rewind the second half in the same direction as the first once I see that I like the yarn in the pattern.

Somewhere in here I need to swatch too so I know what needles with what yarns produce which of the desireable gauges. This morning the FoUI (my DH for those confused by the acronym - known around here as the Font of Useless Information because, well he is) even asked me if I had started swatching yet. In the same tone of voice he uses to ask the child if she's done her homework yet.

In preparation, in addition to getting yarns ready, I thought I should also work on getting some stuff done. After all I'm gonna need the needles for one thing. So I finished the Rockin' Sock Club January Socks.
Pattern: Serendipity by Adrienne Fong
Yarn: Blue Moon Fiber Arts Socks That Rock Lightweight in Dragon Dance
Mods: I swapped the lace pattern (started on row 15 of the chart instead of row 1) and the direction of the decreases for the toe so that the socks would mirror each other. Otherwise I knit to the pattern.
Notes: The heel and toe as written do not fit my particular, somewhat duck-shaped, foot well. When I reknit this pattern, and I will because it was fairly easy and seems to play nice with colorful STR yarn, I will do the heel over fewer stitches and also leave fewer stitches unknit in the center. I will also switch to a wedge toe since that seems to fit my feet better.

I am pleased by the way the socks turned out (other than the fit issues which are easily solved) since I seem to have even managed to match the striping in some spots anyway.

This nice bright red/red-orange is a great color for Project Spectrum 3's current focus on the element of Fire. But it's not really my color. I didn't really warm to the color in the skein. (Pun not intended.) Once I wound it into the cake I liked it a lot better but now that they are knit up I find I like it less than I did in the cake, although more than I did in the skein. This has made me think a bit about how to use this knowledge to pick yarns in the future.

I'm not a big fan of reds in general unless they are blue-ish ones so while I can see the colors as beautiful in the objective sense, these socks are going to be a gift. I believe I even have a friend for whom they would be a good fit in the places they don't fit me too well. So I think I shall have to come up with a reason to gift them to her. How about because it's Friday? Or Wednesday or whatever day I can manage to get together with her.

I've got another red sock yarn that I want to knit up that will be a Project Spectrum 3 Fire project that I'll keep. This red is bluer - more my thing. Plus the pattern has beads which my magpie soul is all over. The only trick will be finding the time to get it knit up within the period of time PS3 is focussing on Fire. I've only got until the end of March and between Sock Madness and all my other projects I'm not sure I can fit it in.

Because, not only did I sign up for Sock Madness after signing up for the Rockin' Sock Club, I also joined the Dream In Color Sweater KAL that Sheri (of Loopy Ewe fame) started up. I've done my swatch. Tomorrow I will wash it and make sure that I have the right needle size. Then I have to knit up my Mr. Greenjeans sweater before the end of May. Preferably sooner since, living as I do in sunny California, by May I shouldn't need a sweater too often.

I also appear to have managed to sign up for two different lace subscriptions. Wildly spending the holiday/birthday gift money while thinking they were the same subscription and that I hadn't actually signed up is probably how I managed to sign up for two. I find it hard to believe that even I could have been so deluded about my knitting speed that I'd have thought two was a wise idea.

However it happened, one of them arrived today. I was briefly confused until I worked out that I had in fact doubled down on lace this year. It's lovely, a pattern by Miriam Felton and a gorgeous green laceweight from Wooly Wonka, but I think maybe I should try to finish Cluaranach before starting any more lace projects. Then there's the next pair of Seely Socks for the FoUI. Who totally deserves them considering how supportive he's being over the whole Sock Madness thing. Not to mention the whole more yarn coming in than knitted things being produced thing.

And that's only the tippy tip of the iceberg. Next time I may post the huge long list of WIPs and queued things that I wish were WIPs - or even better FOs - and the designs my brain seems bent on designing itself, and so on that are why I'm feeling such ravening desire to knit and to have finished knits. At least if I post it I won't have to devote precious brain resources to remembering it since I can look it up here. Maybe then I'll be able to remember that I've got lots of projects to do, not to mention that I'm already in enough yarn clubs and KALs for the moment, and not be tempted by yet another.

Yeah, right, this is me. Like Lord Darlington, "I can resist everything except temptation."