Sockapaloozed!

In my last post, I talked about how I never receive good mail anymore, no cards, no letters. But I neglected to tell you that I did receive my Sockapalooza socks from my pal, Jun.

I received a lovely package from Jun. I absolutely adore these socks and the color too. I would have never chosen it and I'm quite happy with the choice she made. I ran around the house wearing wool socks in a very hot house and was quite happy to do so.

It is really great to receive something handknitted as I don't receive handknit gifts from other knitter friends and the others who don't knit, never seem to think of taking up knitting, even though they may receive handknit gifts. It really is quite special.


My socks were quite well-travelled. The yarn is from Jun's stash of Sweet Georgia Yarns in Willow. I feel really special. The pattern is Adrian's Cable Twist sock patterns. I don't think I would ever knit cabled socks, so these are perfect to receive.


And look Ma, they fit! They were a little tight to pull over the foot, but then they fit snugly, but not tight. Very nice socks and surprisingly, the short row heel fits better than I thought it might.


Thanks a lot Jun for the socks, I really appreciate it!!

Birthday Card Exchange

So here's a little germ of an idea that started floating in my head yesterday after I went to check my mailbox yesterday. I used to love getting mail, fun cards and other packages here and there. Now picking up mail is just drudgery, bills and other junk mail. Rarely a card from a friend anymore. I hadn't checked my mail at all this week and on Saturday thought I should pick up the whack of mail I'm sure I'd accumulated.

When I checked my mail, I had a pleasant surprise, my Sockapalooza socks arrived (pictures and post tomorrow). As I have a birthday upcoming, I thought how said it will be to collect birthday cards this year in my mailbox, as I get very few cards anymore. In college and post-college, I was the person that had friends galore everywhere. I loved receiving cards and mail and sent them to everyone else as well. Over time, I've lost contact with many of my college friends. And at birthday time, I receive less cards and it's a bit sad for me.

What I propose (really because I love to receive cards and I'm hoping you do too)is that anyone who likes to receive cards, send me an email(awanda AT gmail DOT com) replacing the AT with @ and a . with DOT with the subject Birthday Card Exchange. In the email tell me your address and birthday and I will send you a card on your birthday. I'll send you my address and hopefully you will send me a card back too.

My birthday is August 27th and I would love to receive a few cards from my virtual, but also real, friends. Please don't think this is a way to ask for stuff, this is solely a card exchange. I'm not trying to hit up people, I just truly love receiving cards.

Let me know if you're interested! I thought it might be fun. If I get no response, that's ok too.

Knitting Camp: The Other Side

Others have already documented the Knitting Camp experience, aka Camp WannaKnitKnit. Some of my favorite people and knitting buds all get together once a year and go to a cabin in the mountains, for a lot of girl time, knitting, eating and some movie-watching and a general chance to catch up with everyone. This year was our third year and every year, Stacey and some of the other girls put together a gift bag and this year they surely went over the top. What can they ever do to top this year's goodie bag, I just don't know!

This year's bag was a Colorful Accessories creation. Beautiful print, no? And a good size to carry a sweater or larger project in, perfect!




The contents of said bag:
Highlighter tape, which is awesome for lace, a skein of yarn dyed by Adrian, a mini sock blocker kit and stitch markers.



Sock yarn by Adrian of Hello Yarn in a Camp WannaKnitKnit colorway, Tres Campy (for our third camp year!), which is a heavier sock yarn, more sport weight, imo. 395 yds of lusciousness (my made-up word), these will be perfect for comfy house socks and will remind me forever of my camp time this year.




Thanks girls for a great weekend! Can't wait till next year.

With A Little Help From Our Friends

Who hasn't needed a little help from time to time? If you read Norma, like I do, two things that you need to know.

One, the Red Scarf Project has some different rules for donation for 2008, as well as a donation fund to be given to students in need. There's also a button on the right-hand sidebar of my blog. Feel free to donate early and often. Norma's also running a contest for donations to the OFA/Red Scarf Project, so do send Norma an email if you donate.

Second, Norma's (almost son-in law) participated in a reality show for a 13-week contract on As The World Turns. He needs your help in voting here and you can read more about it on Norma's blog. Okay, enough from me today, 2 posts in one day? What is the world coming to? :-)

Shh, Pay No Attention to Me . . .

Just blocking here. . .
Finally, a Diamond Fantasy Scarf/Shawl almost done. The beauty that is blocking.


A little closer now:



Look at those pretty diamonds and that point!*swoon*

And We're Off!

I don't recall if I mentioned it that I signed up for Dish Rag Tag hosted by Emily of Yarn Miracle. I signed up for it in June, a bit of competitive knitting, if you will.

We're all on teams and and each team captain (that's me) receives a box from Emily with a dish rag, two skeins of dish cloth cotton and a little goodie. We take one or both skeins and knit a dish cloth, put in a new goodie, two new skeins of yarn and the new knitted dish cloth and mail it to the next participant. Earlier in the summer, I was having a dish cloth affair and was really into knitting my dish cloth cotton. Since my last dish cloth bender, I'm actually down to just 5 skeins, but now I want to buy more. Anyhow, enough of my "addiction" talk.

I received my box on Friday evening. M and I had planned to enjoy an outdoor music concert, but the weather looked shaky and M2 had all four wisdom teeth removed that day and wasn't feeling too well that evening, so we skipped it. I checked my mailbox and I had a package, yay! On the left is the dish cloth I received from Emily, a 4 Corners dish cloth. On the right is my finished Violets dishcloth (warning pdf!)



Then a finished dish cloth all by itself in Sugar 'N Creme Denim Blue. After I finished it, I was sad to see it go. I'll be needing to pick up some more yarn in this colorway (umm, yeah, back to that "addiction" talk).



And the box is on its way to the next contestant on the "Running Ragged" Team:



I really love the dish cloth pattern, Violets. The only problem is that when I see it, I think it's so pretty, I might have a hard time actually using it. I think that's why most of my dishcloths are plain, just garter stitch.


Ooops, gotta go check on a fully submerged DFS. Later all, hope you're all having a good weekend!

Sockapalooza Trifecta!

Just in the nick of time, the Sockapalooza socks have been completed. While I was kitchenering the last toe of the second sock, I was also at the same point for my first Lemon Ice Sock. And I'd started another sock, so I thought, "Why not show all socks in some measure of completion?" So here you go. . .

The first picture shows the Sockapalooza socks (in red/orange/brown/cream jacquard), then the first sock in a colorway I call Lemon Ice in Sockotta sock yarn and lastly, a new sock started in Opal Rainforest colorway Caterpillar.



A solo picture of my sockpal's completed socks.



The yarn is Fortissima Socka Mit Bambou (a wool/nylon/bamboo mix). Since my sockapalooza pal likes her socks on the tall-ish side, I knit the leg to 7", after that I start to tire of knitting socks, truly. The pattern I used is Thuja from Knitty. I couldn't decide on a pattern for the longest time and decided to go with a known winner. As Polly always mentions on her blog that socks for an unknown person or someone you're unable to measure for, a sock with lots of stretch is best, that's how I decided on Thuja. It works well with the sock yarn and the pattern doesn't distract from the self-patterning nature of the yarn. Overall, very pleased with these socks. And I finished them fairly quickly for me, as well as having time to get started and finishing an entirely different sock.

On to the next sock, it is the completed first Lemon Ice sock. I love this crazy yarn that my Coffee Swap Pal, Kat, sent me. I actually am less in love with the content of the sock yarn, but love the colorway. It's very fun. It's just a K3, P2 rib, but I did learn that 60 sts for a slightly heavier yarn didn't work for my gauge. The second sock will be 55 sts. If I were to knit with this sock yarn again, I would definitely use about 54 stitches. And I knit the cuff in rib and the foot of the sock plain. Can't wait to finish the second sock, should be doable by the end of the month!



And certainly not least, a new sock! Whee! How I love knitting socks. And lately I've not had the mental capacity to do much more than do simple patterns. Just way too busy and feeling like I can't ever catch up and too hot when I get home, so all socks all the time it has been. The yarn is more from my Opal collection :-) This is from the Rainforest Collection, in the Caterpillar colorway. This yarn was gifted to me by Stacey. I was lucky to receive it, I really just adore this colorway right now. Not sure why, but oh well.



Next up, the "knitting camp update".

Lace Rib Tank

That's a less than enticing photo below, but some of you may recall this project from last summer. This tank was started last August when I visited my mother in Atlanta and after I finished the first side, I put it down and didn't start the second side until I was leaving Atlanta this summer. Too funny, the circle of life.

Now, I'm finished knitting the body and one strap, just have one more strap to go. I'm at the point where I just want to finish it, but not really that enthused to do so. My head is being turned by many lovely new projects, but I feel a round of finishing coming up soon. This time the lace pattern and I really jibed and I zoomed through the body of it, but left the straps for 2 weeks. Finally this past weekend I picked it back up and worked on one side and finished it quickly. This project also requires seaming, but I haven't done that in awhile, so I suppose I'll have my chance.



Right now the knitting has been focused almost exclusively on the Sockapalooza socks. I did finish the first sock and am now on the heel flap of the second one. While this is no contest and I'm not the fastest knitter, especially with knitting socks, I think it's the Thuja pattern that keeps me going and I know that I need to finish these soon. The sooner I get them done, then I can move on to other sock patterns I want to try and the deadline monkey will be off my back.

Also, I finally got motivated to finish DFS and I worked on it for an hour or so two nights ago. I've only got this one repeat, 20 rows to finish. Now down to about 15. I'm trying to knock it out too. This knit has lingered a bit too long and while I desire the finished object, I'm also ready to finish it. The love is definitely not gone, but it needs to be on my shoulders and not smooshed in a bag. I also want to cast on for new lace and I have decided to allow myself to have more than one lace project, but I can have one shawl and one stole. I have yarn already wound for the next shawl, so I better get cracking on this one.

I'm sure you won't see a blog post from until next week as I'm preparing to go up with my girls to our knitting camp this weekend. Hopefully I can finish up a few things while there!

Mystery Stole Dropout

In one of my joiner moments, I signed up for Mystery Stole 3. Hmm, it was sort of surprising that I did this, as it is totally against my nature. I love reading mysteries, but don't want to knit something that I don't already know what the finished item will look like. Because I had some lace gifted to me last year by my Lace Swap Pal, I thought this would be good to appropriate to Mystery Stole. But as I have about 1800 yds, I do feel I should use it on a shawl that uses a lot of yarn.

As I began knitting on MS3, so excited for my first clue, I was a bit surprised at how long it took for each row and these are not huge rows as it's a stole, not a triangular shawl that grows each row. I've gotten up to row 80 on the first clue, but I'm not feeling it. As I see others finished (up to clue 2 or 3), I don't really like the design. Nothing wrong with the design, it's just not my preference. M looked at one and labelled it a "table runner". It does sort of resemble one, but it just doesn't float my boat.

It's interesting on the list b/c someone said they didn't really like this design and decided to stop knitting it. Another list member said this was like a lace knitting workshop and that the person should finish it and give it to charity if they don't like the finished result and everyone had to determine what they wanted from the knitalong, her goal was to challenge herself. Obviously everyone can do whatever they want, but that response sort of chapped my hide. I totally disagree that you should just finish something because you started it, that's ridiculous in my book. It's a beautiful design, but not one that I would choose. Just because it's given to me, doesn't require my finishing it. Knitting Mystery Stole isn't for me to challenge myself. It's a more advanced lace design and I guess I don't feel the need to challenge myself with this. I actually feel like I challenged myself working on DFS.

So Mystery Stole is a mystery no longer. It's been ripped out and I'm ready to start some new lace. I'm in a mood for socks and lace right now, probably due to the heat. No desire for tanks right now, just lightweight, portable projects.




Above is a pic, but not a great one for Mystery Stole, as it wasn't pinned out. Sorry for the crappy shot, but I don't much care as it's all gone now.