fiberjinx

Have you been enjoying the Robin Hood series on BBC America? I have!

Submitted for review, one (1) pair of finished socks.

They’ve been done and hanging around for a couple of days now but I have not had the energy to drag myself to the computer and talk about how wonderful I think they are yet. So I’m half assing it here today.

So, more Monkeys! My scheme to avoid admitting to those concerned peoples surrounding me that I’ve fallen off the no-repeat-sock-knitting wagon is to just not tell them. Then they don’t know until I’m already done! Many of these naysayers have not yet knit monkeys of their own yet, so how can they really understand this tawdry love affair with a 12 row repeat?

For this pair, the only change in the original pattern was to knit all the stitches. No purls! I used STR mediumweight for the first time. I love this yarn! It’s very cool and super wash, which is a big plus in my book. I had to go down to size 1 needles for proper sock size. Anyone else have this issue? It made the fabric very dense and I think that size 1 would be best with STR lightweight, but I can’t attest to that as I’ve never seen any lightweight. Me thinks this may lead to some yarn ordering. Yet another wagon I’m destined to fall off!

(Note: The fabric was dense but I really liked that. I think I will knit another pair. They will make rockin winter socks).

Overall I’ve been feeling very blah lately, but I’m told this is totally normal when one is in the first trimester of pregnancy.

As it turns out, I am much further along than I should reasonably be without having been clued in before, but still haven’t hit the second trimester. At least now I understand why I’ve been falling asleep at work and feeling like I’ve run two marathons by the time I get to bed! So apologies if you were expecting massive updates from here, we still have a couple of weeks left before the energy is supposed to return! I can’t promise it will be worth the wait, but I can promise many, many mini-human sized objects in the near future.

So Angie tagged me it, and here’s the super crazy “7 random things about me” post that I am completely dink on!

1. I have a really hard time expressing myself to people, either in conversation or by written letter/e-mail. To me it seems everyone else can bang out a note or praise for someone/thing without any effort but I always get hung up in words and semantics. This probably stems from the fact that I don’t often carry on huge conversations with people. I am the perfect person for short bursts of sporadic discussion. In long, drawn out conversations and writings I get distracted by shiny things (and often yarn), losing track of all thought processes unintentionally.

2. I have a degree in computer programming but have never used it for powers of awesome in the workforce.

3. I have many, varied hobbies. Often I get obsessed with one thing and research the hell out of it, live and breathe it for days on end, and eventually replace it with something else. The exceptions to this (so far) have been knitting, photography, the occasional scrapbooking, and Battlestar Galactica. (Sorry, had to throw that last one in there.)

4. Recently both my husband and I have adopted a vegan diet and have enjoyed most of our usual cuisine without any major problems. I have to say, it is somewhat easier than I thought it would be.

5. I am a perfectionist with a severe case of OCD. I do strive to control it, but sometimes it wins out.

6. My father’s hobby for over thirty years has been gunsmithing. Both my brother and I have been shooting since we were young and I feel that because of this background and exposure, we are more respectful of guns and the damage they can cause. We were never afraid to go to an adult when a bad situation involving weapons might arise. I used to compete (and win) on junior league .22 rifle teams. I am a bit rusty now but I can still get what my husband describes as “scary accurate” bullseye grouping on a pistol range.

7. If I could only pick one movie to watch while stranded on a deserted island with television and DVD player, it would be Starship Troopers. And I honestly can’t explain why.

I don’t know who to tag, so I went back through the blog and picked the first seven commenters that hadn’t already done this on their blog. Consider yourself meme’ed! And if you are reading this and feel like participating, make with it! Post a link in the comments if you like. I myself enjoy random things about mysterious knitters I meet through the intertubes.

lyssa
Christa
Tasha
Anastacia
Alison
Kristy
Cindra

and started knitting something new.

My fickleness should not surprise anyone what with my short attention span and penchant for familiar, easily transportable projects. But all this monkey talk had me worked up and the next thing I knew I was digging through the stash for this.

This is Socks That Rock, medium weight, “Nodding Violets” colorway. While I had the swift out the Cracked Canyon got a spin as well. I have never used STR yarn, but all of Cara’s talk about it has led me to try it out. I mean, I like socks, right? And I like nice sock yarn, right? Given how much Cara goes on and on and on about how fantastic this yarn is it seemed plausible that (as she doesn’t appear to be paid for her promotion of said yarn) it could really really be an excellent yarn. I am guilty of empathetic promotion of items I feel I can’t live without myself, be it yarn, music, food, or what have you. Yet while these things rock my world and I can’t stop gushing about them, you may not feel the same way once you experience them yourself.

In this case, it is not so. The true life testamonials are true and for serious.

STR yarn is buttery soft and intensely colored, everything I heart in a sock. Every stitch of the sock I cast on last night has been a delight, every minute a private little guilty pleasure between yarn, needle and myself. Sure, I had experienced this vicariously through petting the yarn of others, but feeling the yarn and really feeling the yarn has been two completely different events.

Transcendant, to be sure. A woman at MDSW asked some of us in The Fold’s line what was so special about STR. Had I known then what I know now, I may have rambled on about its mystical properties. Another girl responded with “Oh, it’s really great sock yarn.” And that I can not deny!

I really want to thank everyone that has commented/emailed/visited the past few days. Lots of questions about socks and especially the monkeys! I’ve enjoyed every bit of it and hope I’m helping you guys out there in knit land. That is why I even started this blog-a way to share my experiences with the community.

If you have a Flickr account and you are feeling particularly froggy, I started a group for Monkey socks. Go ahead and join. I’ve never done this before, so if it spontaneously combusts, don’t say I didn’t warn you!

Sadly, my knitting time is short in the near future. I will be having windows installed in the home starting Monday and there’s some painting to do. Also, the guts of my den need to be covered with drywall before this all happens. Which wouldn’t be a super big problem, except that it has taken three days to get one sheet on the wall. What can I say, we’re very… thorough?

I leave you with Kaylee, enjoying the six foot view she conquered all on her own.

Wishing all sunny knitting weather for this weekend!

Wow.

I don’t know what to say, except HI EVERYBODY!

According to wordpress, lots of you are coming this way via Cara. She’s obsessing herself with the Monkey sock pattern and as you may or may not know, I also knit that pattern. A couple of times. I might have mentioned it. Sometimes I still load the Knitty page with the pattern and stare at the green, green socks and dream about finding size 2 needles and casting on with some of the new Lorna’s I got but recently I was stopped by this.

These are called Yukon Leaves, free pattern through the link. I used Lorna’s Laces in Manzanita on size 1 Addi’s, two circ-style.

You may think that SSS stands for Second Sock Syndrome but in this case it stands for Socks that Sucked out my Soul. I’m not sure what it was exactly that turned me off halfway through the second sock. I started these about two months ago, or whenever it was I finished the last pair of socks but never blogged about them. Maybe subconsiously I just didn’t want to admit to them so I could throw them in the corner and move on to something else?

At any rate, don’t let my experience scare you away from these socks. If you google the pattern you will find lots of successful (and happy!) owners of these socks. I myself like how they turned out.

Moving on, because we have more fun things to talk about.

Friday the nutmeg and I left Va Beach and made like bandits (Code named Loretta and Margie) for Colombia, MD and the Sheep and Wool Festival you might have heard about. We sat through horrendous traffic (oh DC residents, how do you carry on knowing you have to face that every day? I thought bridge and tunnel traffic was bad around here…), experienced amazing varieties of people at a Cracker Barrel, saw the largest P.F. Chang’s restaurant in the history of P.F. Chang’s restaurants, had some 5 star accommodations and rocked the festival before heading home in terrible, rainy traffic (we did stop at Ikea. We HAD to stop at Ikea. You understand, right?).

As for the loot:

From left to right, we have 1) A caramel colored merino/tencel blend. It’s quite soft and shiny! 2) Two skeins of Socks that Rock, in colorways Lemongrass and Cracked Canyon. No, I did not wait in that line. I haven’t seen a line like that since Beanie Babies were all the rage. 3) Some Australian S51 in a crazy awesome colorway of blues and greens (very me). 4) A colonial wool that is soft as clouds and dyed in a Sagey colorway (also very Margie). 5) A big ball of wool, for the life of me… is it Merino? I have to find the receipt. It was about $8 for that pound and is the most beautiful, murky green blue, much like the Chesapeake Bay. In the clean parts. 6) A shawl pin from Moving Mud. I was drawn to this color instantly. Surprised?

Didn’t think you would be!

Now that things are settling back to normal and I am decompressing I can return to the current obsession !!! of Lizardy Ridges.

As always, more fun things in the Flickr page.