Narcissistic Yarn, Acts of Desperation, and Other Random Thoughts

Today I added a few photos to go with the ramblings on of a distracted mind. Here's my completed "Smooshy Socks" aka Socks for Veronik. The yarn lives up to it's name. soft and smooshy! I wore them yesterday and got gushing raves everywhere I went. That's pretty impressive for socks. With each pair of socks I knit, I learn something new. From the smooshy socks I learned how to knit socks that would fit around my curvy calves and still fit at the ankle. At last I can knit a sock with a longer leg, right? Not so fast.... They fit just great, they just don't want to stay there. Chalk another one up for gravity as the socks retract comfortably to just above where all my other socks sit. Some battles just weren't meant to be won. Back to knitting 4-5" cuffs.

I knew I had to go to the doctor's office yesterday and with no "current" socks OTN I needed a project to take with me. So I resumed work on Daddy's Christmas socks. I knit the heel flap over the weekend and got all the stitches picked up for the gusset. Lots of stitches since these are big socks for big feet. I was testing the limits of my favorite KnitPicks needles with all those stitches. Desperate times call for desperate acts. I knew I couldn't just pitch these socks into my purse and go without losing stitches everywhere, so I grabbed my 32" KP circular and started knitting a la Magic Loop style. My stitches are saved from drop-offs! It's pretty awkward in that you have to fight the natural curvature of the cable, even if it's a super flexible cable. Messing with the loop is fiddly and I'm not yet convinced this is superior to dpns. I am knitting in all stockinette at this point, so that's pretty simple, but working in pattern may be more tricky. Magic Looping does demand the use of stitch markers, things I never used on dpns as the spacing of stitches across the needles served to mark where you are at in the pattern. I may switch back to dpns once the gusset decreases are done, but for now it's magic loop time I guess.


My last photo is symbolic of how my day has gone today. We had terrible wind storms last night, I didn't take my usual sleep med (forgot to get it refilled) hence I didn't sleep too well. So I'm not in my best form when my four-legged friend came to see me this morning. Miss Emme, aka Her Royal Majesty of Supreme Rottenness, decided it was time to be picked up and put into my bed. Dachsies are short, my bed is tall--enough said. Emme has her favorite way of occupying my bed, and this morning's offering was not up to her expectations. It was a rough night, after all, so there weren't many blankets left on the bed. I was trying to knit on THE SOCKS (they will be done this year, Daddy, I promise!) but NO! I must move. I must fix the blankets. I get up and start to make the bed, but before I can crawl back in She took over. Rotten I tell you, rotten. Parked right on top of my heating pad. I know when I have lost. I relocated to the recliner with my knitting, sans the heating pad.

This should have been a sign portending things to come. I picked up a new shawl pattern while I was at the Yarn Haven yesterday. Oh yeah, I hit the LYS! I bought another skein of Araucania Ranco to knit socks for my sister for Christmas (or her B-day if I don't get done in time). While I was there I thumbed through Sandy's pattern collection. She's been expanding these things and I was happy to learn she is carrying FiberTrends and HeartStrings patterns. I've been looking at HeartStrings patterns for awhile, but didn't have a convenient source--until now. I loved Jackie's Scotch Thistle Stole design when she released it last summer. Others liked it too, as there was quite a rush on the pattern and dyed-to-match Schaefer yarn that was meant to go with the pattern. When I saw it at TYH, I knew it was my answer to what to knit for Mother for Christmas.

After careful deliberation and review of finances, I opted to forgo buying new yarn and use some cashmere from the stash. This is the pretty brick red yarn that I ordered hoping for a ruby red. Sweet Richard at ColourMart found some ruby red and sent me both cones. The Brick is perfect for Mom, and if used double stranded, is perfect for the Thistle Stole. No problem, right? I'll just wind off half the cone with my trusty ball winder, then knit from both for the stole. I've done this many times without a hitch, but not so today. They say yarn has personality. Different yarns say different things, like "Hey. look at me! I'm bright and sassy" or "I'm soooo soft and sweet, don't you want to pet me?" The brick cashmere has a personality all right, a narcissistic personality. It's very fond of itself. It's also quite flighty, as in flying off the spindle when I had about 40g wound off. That means the ball gets to sit on the floor next to the partially unwound cone to go through the winding process all over again. Bothersome, but not problematic, right? Wrong! I've heard folks whine about yarn barf before, you know, the big globs of yarn that spew forth from center-pull balls to crate havoc and knots while you work. Yarn Barf! I'd never had any bad barf before, but this self-absorbed stuff puked constantly and didn't want to be separated into one long line. Bad yarn! I hissed my way through rewinding and now I have yarn ready to knit. I hope it behaves better while knitting. I put some nice hand cream on while rewinding the yarn in the hopes of discouraging it's stuck-on-self ways in the future. And here I thought narcissistic people were difficult to deal with. Who knew yarn could be too!

Frivolity

There's nothing like a Monday afternoon to engage in frivolity. You know the stuff-- fun, interesting, or pleasing but generally unnecessary activities. Well, maybe unnecessary in somebody's point of view. I am in the midst of decorating the house for Christmas. That means setting up 2 Christmas trees, one upstairs (mine) and one downstairs (the family tree), plus all the other accoutrement that makes our house suitably attired for the season. I intend to have fun doing the decorating this year. Last year was not fun as I was in the throes of my dissertation and very stressed out. Last year the downstairs tree & decorations never emerged from their off-season hiding place.

But hauling boxes around and setting up trees (those beautiful, pre-lit trees are HEAVY!) is physically demanding and not especially compatible with my fibromyalgia-ravaged body. This means I have to take frequent rest breaks. More frivolity I guess, since I saw this on someone's blog and decided to take the quiz. It's called your personal DNA and it's kind of a take-off on those personality tests you took in freshman psych class (ie. Myers-Briggs, etc.). Anyway, here's what they said about me:

Animated Inventor

Hmmm, sounds pretty OK. There are a few things I questioned, but then I had a hard time answering quite a few of those questions where sometimes I'm one way and other times I'm the opposite--a true Gemini. Some of the rest reflects more of what I used to do/be or would like to do/be, but not necessarily what my life is like right this minute. Geez, I could over-analyze anything half to death! Thinking, thinking, thinking.... One of my favorite bloggers calls this stuff useless blather. I agree.

On the knitting front, I finished my Smooshy Socks for Veronik yesterday. No FO pix just yet, but I'll get some posted later. I'm quite happy with how they turned out and I look forward to seeing how well they wear. Some recent dialogue about sock yarns on Ravelry brought to light the importance of reserving judgment on the wonderfulness of a yarn until after the finished item has been worn/used and laundered for a period of time. Things that seem great at first don't always retain their wonderfulness. I wore a pair of socks I knit a year or so ago using some soft Knit Picks Sock Garden yarn. I think I pulled 2 dozen fuzzy balls off of each sock---the stuff pills like mad! It's no so bad for house socks, but I wouldn't be so pleased if it was a sweater.

I picked up Daddy's Socks out of the UFO basket and resumed knitting on them. He will get them, finished and ready to wear this year! I'm still in anguish over what to knit for Mom. Do I suck it up and knit a black shawl, which is what she wants (and I dread the mere thought of), out of fingering wt. yarn, which would make it warm (what she wants) and fast to knit (good for me). I would have to buy yarn for this as I have nothing black. But, I have some beautiful cashmere from ColourMart (Thanks Richard!) that is a lovely heathered brick shade that would go with lots of her clothes and would look fabulous on her. Decisions!

Quarantine Over

It was a nasty little virus. Sneaky in it's approach, insidious at best, but boy oh boy did it knock me out of commission! Almost 2 weeks it's been since the initial migraine and sinus congestion. I think I can safely say it's over now as I ended the day with yet another migraine. The miserable things, they get you coming and going.

So I slept a lot, contemplated knitting projects a lot, and got a fair amount of knitting done. The downside--it had to be relatively uncomplicated knitting most of the time because my head simply wasn't up to knitting complex shawls. Uncomplicated means socks. I love my Monkey Socks. I love the pattern enough that I might just knit it a second time, with a few changes of course. Some of the folks over on Ravelry have knit the lace motif without the purl stitch sections on the 1st few rows. They chose to knit those little wedges instead, making it much easier to execute without detracting from the esthetic appeal of the lace.


Right now I'm working on the "Socks for Veronik" pattern from the latest IK Holiday Knits magazine. I'm calling them my Smooshy Socks since I'm using the Dream in Color Smooshy sock yarn I bought at the Yarn Patch. This is truly luscious sock yarn---so soft and squishy, lots of loft. In fact, it's a bit deceptive becasue the yarn looks much fatter in the skein than it becomes once knitted up. It's that smooshy factor I guess. Whatever, the yarn is delicious and the subtlety of the variegated dyeing adds richness to the look of the sock without competing against the lace. I wonder if I can convince Sandy or Jinka to carry this yarn?

I may not be able to buy DEC Smooshy here in town, but I did score a skein of orange and white sock yarn the Sandy at The Yarn Haven had custom-dyed by J Knits. Called Go UT! this is the Superwash Me sock yarn that I've alos heard very good things about. I picked up my skein this afternoon when I stopped by to drop off the Havenly Scarf pattern. At $24.99, it is a bit on the pricey side, but it was a custom order and the skein is huge! Mine weighted 125g which is practically enough to do a pair of short-cuff socks and a pair of footies. I will definitely be casting on this yarn for my next pair of socks. The question is, what pattern should I use? There are oodles of great sock patterns out there plus the socks that are merely ideas in my head--it's no wonder I have trouble making decisions about what to knit next :-)

What do you do?

What do you do when you're sick with a respiratory virus and feel basically awful? Well, I've been watching Tennessee athletics, knitting socks, and surfing Ravelry. Oh, and sleeping...lots of sleeping. Phil's guys pulled out the miracle game on Saturday against in-state rival Vanderbilt. Tonight it was Bruce's boys bouncing the B-ball against Middle TN State in a blow-out. JaJuan Smith had a stellar game and Ramar Smith hit his free throws, something he couldn't manage to conquer on Friday night. The football team heads to Lexington for a tough game against Kentucky on Saturday while the B-ball team heads to NJ for a tournament and their first real test of the season. I'm optimistic that both teams can come out victorious---something that hasn't happened at TN for a very long time.


I took my completed Monkey socks out into the yard for some artsy pictures among the fall leaves. Yes, this year the fall colors peaked here after the 10th of November--it wasn't cold enough before then. It's been a strange year weather-wise. I planed to post some of those pictures but Blogger is also "under the weather" apparently, as I get nothing but error codes and apologies out of Blogger. I did post one more picture on Flickr, but I've maxed my Flickr account uploading pictures for Ravelry so I can't add a bunch of pix any more without deleting something else or sending them moola (which I don't have at present). The 'net does have its limits.


With the Monkey socks done, it was time to choose another sock yarn from the stash and cast-on. I've been poring over patterns for weeks, so that choice was the hardest. The pattern choice also dictated which yarn to grab. I've been dying to cast-on the Smooshy yarn I bought at the Yarn Patch last month and the latest Mona Schmidt sock pattern in Interweave Knits Holiday 2007 seemed like the patch match. The pattern is called Socks for Veronik, apparently because Mona originally designed adn knit a pair for fellow designer Veronik Avery. I'm calling them my Smooshy socks after the yarn, which is smooshy soft and very nice to knit with.



My only complaint about the yarn thus far is the 2 terrible splices I've encountered--and I'm only 13g into a 113g skein! They are unsightly and I had to do a little trimming on one, but I suppose it could be worse---it could have been knots instead. But the semi-solid aquatic blues colorway (Blue Lagoon) is simply wonderful. The subtle color variation adds life to the sock without obscuring the lacework. The lace is a variation on a horseshoe lace, incorporating a p3tog instead of a knitted central double decrease. The p3tog is much easier and faster to knit and I love how it looks. I took a few risks with my needle selection in an attempt to vary the size of the cuff to fit my curvy calves. Mona intended the leg portion to be 7" above the heel flap, something that wouldn't fit me without modifications. So I cast-on and started with 3.25mm dpns, gradually tapering down to 2.25mm for the heel and foot. I knit 8 or the 10 suggested repeats of the lace pattern and guess what??? It fits!!!! I'm thrilled to be able to knit a sock that will add a little more coverage and warmth for the winter. I'm almost done with the gusset decrease, so I should have the 1st sock done in a couple of days. Cool, very cool!