Shhhhhhhhh.......

I've been poking around on the Internet for quite some time and it seems to be the trend for Fridays to be yarn porn day. This couldn't be more fitting considering that today is perhaps the most yarn-pornyest day that ever there was. I have to kind of keep it on the down low though. I think I may have reached a new peak in the "Oh my GOD! What have I done?!?" category. Anyhow, let's get this party started.....
First off is aforementioned Lorna's Laces Shepherd sock.

Here's a bit of a closeup that shows the colors a little better.

I don't really remember what all I d about this yarn before, but the green one is Envy and the other is Vera. Yum, yum, yum. Even if it is way thinner than I had in mind when I ordered it. I still couldn't really capture all the coolness of the Vera. It's a very strange yet pretty combo of dark pink/mauve/fuchsia with some browns and grayish greens. The Envy is the one I'm attempting to knit up for my sister, though I think I'm going to have to frog it once again because now the sock is turning out super huge. Did I mention this before?? Possibly.....

Okay. Now here is what caused me to think that maybe I've really lost it this time. This is like the Adult Film Awards of my yarn porn.

Voila!

And in a view that makes me froth at the mouth just a wee bit more....

From left to right we have Pink Granite, Socktopus, Rhodonite, Lunasea (which is particularly applicable to me), Puck's Mischief, and Fire on the Mountain. All of it is STR mediumweight, with the exceptions of Socktopus and the Pink Granite which are lightweight.

Socktopus and Lunasea are two of the new colors from the Tides collection. I literally almost threw up from excitement when I saw that they had added them.

Fire on the Mountain is just like a hippie tie-dye rainbow for the feet. I'll be looking forward to digging into this one. It'll take me some time to think of something to do that won't f#%@# around with the color scheme. I got these two patterns, also.

I like the patterns from BMFA. I still am uneasy about mixing lace with colors, but apparently sometimes it works out just fine. So, what does one do when all these goodies happen to arrive on the same day?? Absolutely freak out. Now, I've hid yarn before for various reasons. I wouldn't want a kid to touch something or I wouldn't want someone to see something that may be for them. There have also been times where I was little ashamed that I had to pick up this or that while I as out so I may have just pretended that it didn't happen for awhile while the yarn rested in a hidden bag. This however........

You have to remember that the above happened in like a nanosecond while I thought someone was coming up the stairs. Yes, this yarn was hidden out of pure fear. Fear o what, I'm not exactly sure, but fear it was. It as like having a soft, squishy, super wash merino panic attack and moment of sheer joy simultaneously. Scary. I think I'm going to have to take them out one by one and just pretend the others don't exist. Then, once one is safely hidden, I'm come down and nab another one. Sickness, people. That's what this is. Plain old crazy-yarn-lady sickness.

Hope everyone has a good weekend !!

laziness

my keyboard is broken in a way which prevents me from capitalizing letters. sorry for that. I'm feeling very lazy/tired today and really didn't feel like uploading pictures. if i had done so, i would be showing you a completed quill lace sock along with about half of a second. I'd also perhaps show off some of the new Lorna's laces i got to make my sister and myself some goodies. I'm a little peeved about the Lorna's laces though because i realized, only after splurging on quite a few different colorways, that i was ordering the sock weight and not the sport. the sock weight is okay and feels about as good as any other sock yarn, but the sport weight is soft, cushy, and all around my preferred Lorna's laces sock type product. i started my sisters socks on a size one and worked and worked my little hands off. after about a night's worth of work.....which yielded an approximate total length of about 2-2.5 inches, i found that it there was absolutely no way in hell that any full size human was going to fit it over their foot/heel. i ripped it out and started a new pattern with 80 stitches and am now thinking, after knitting and knitting and knitting, that it may be far too large an fiber consuming. this is one of the main reasons why i am a very selfish knitter/person in general. things just don't turn out right when i try my hand at random kindness.
okay, I've grown tired of playing with this monstrous key board so I'll bid a quick farewell and come back when i have some visuals.

Quill Lace Socks

I decided not to waste any time before diving into another sock. Surprise, surprise. My latest endeavor is the quill lace socks from the current (??) issue of Knitty. I'm liking the pattern now, but found it a little tedious at first. I'm often that way when I first start something new. Now that I have it in my head and can just do it, the sock and I are getting along better. Oh, and this is my Little Bunny Foo Foo medium weight STR. See the resemblance to Lucy??

Here's a detail of the lace.

I made some sort of heinous mistake on the cuff and ended up with surplus of stitches. I did my best to fix it but knew as I was doing it that it wasn't exactly working out. I should have been less lazy and ripped back a few rows, but I don' really care too much. You can see a pretty obvious screw up here in the middle two columns.

It's in the back of the sock and it's not like a person could tell (I hope) without really looking. The sock also has an 'Eye of Partridge' heel, which I don't think I've even done before. It's not all that different stitch wise from my usual slip stitch heel, but there's quite a contrast in appearance.

I've gotta play around with my camera some more and figure out how to get shots that have more color accuracy. I keep getting wither really dark photos or the flash bleaches everything out so much that my pictures look either black & white or like a giant shiny thing. I'll have to put that on my to-do list. That's all for now : )

Goes From Virgin to Yarn Whore in 60 Seconds

I've come to a realization about myself. I need to anticipation of packages arriving in the mail to get through the average day. I knew bad things would happen when I started shopping online. I knew it! Oh well. I guess having yarn issues,while still a legitimate worry, is much less severe than many problems one might develop. That being said, here is what arrived for me this week.

I hate to say it but I'm less impressed with this shipment than i was with the previous one. I think it's practically because the colors are a wee bit different than they appeared on the screen (whereas the others were spot on) and that the first order I placed was ones that I really, really wanted while this one was more in the category of "Hmmmm...do I want this one?.....or do I want that one?" which basically culminated in my just kind of randomly deciding on two of the multitude that I desire. I still like them though. And maybe when they're knit up I'll be doing imaginary back flips over them like I did with the first order. And yes, sat here for a good 10 minutes with at least one hank of the yarn pressed up to my face while I semi-psychotically inhaled it's fabulousness. The one on the left is STR Henpecked and the other is Little Bunny Foo Foo, both in medium weight. LBFF is essentially Lucy but with pink instead if the blue. In my head I think of it as being grey, but it is in fact a beige-ish color.

On to the next subject.....oddly still related to my new found obsession with STR.

Guess what I have???

Why yes, that's a photo of me relaxing in my super-terrific Monkey socks!

I enjoy standing in them, too.

Here's a closeup of the pattern.

As previously stated, this is the Monkey pattern from Knitty. I used STR lightweight in the Cracked Canyon colorway and size 2 needles to accommodate my humongous feet. I love them.

Now I get to break into the new stuff: )-

One down

I'm loving my Monkeys. I'm also loving my STR. Big time. The sheer awesomeness of my socks is so great, in fact, at it may case somewhat of a family rift. My mom, who doesn't even wear socks, picked up my completed Monkey and put it on her dirty foot. She then asked me which color I was going to make her a pair in. My first reaction was to go to BMFA's and show her the colors. The underlying plan being, of course, to throw a hank or two into the order for myself. But then.....then......ughhh. I don't even want to say it. She wants my new Lorna's Laces. My new, pretty, pink Lorna's Laces for which I had already printed out a little pattern which was carefully placed in a it's own special plastic sleeve just waiting for my Monkeys to be finished. After I picked up the crumbles of my heart, I quickly formulated a new plan. I would order more or the Tickled Pink and get a few hanks of the Vera colorway, too. Then I thought better. It's very rare that I can knit with the same yarn multiple times. I get bored and part of the whole sock yarn draw is the novelty of color. I decided to just not be selfish and make her the freakin' socks.......except then I had a big realization while I was freakishly sitting up in my office staring across the room at the yarn I had spread out over the adjacent chair. The Tickled Pink has a great big glob of purple in it! So does the Rhodonite colorway from BMFA that I've been stalking. The new and improved (and tentatively final) plan is this. Purchase the Rhodonite and knit both it and the Lorna's Laces. Then I can fully consider the extra yarn purchase as being part of a highly involved experiment. Excellent!

So I was going to Chick-Fil-A for dinner.......

Oops. I forgot that the JoAnns with the big yarn section lives right across the street from the Chick-Fil-A in Columbia. So, while I intended to run out and come home with some chicken nuggets, I came home with this instead.

The guy who checked me out asked me if I was a new knitter. I felt a little bad about being asked this because I still carry a bit of buying-shitty-yarn shame. I said that no, in fact I was NOT a novice and explained my predicament about being in town to buy some chicken, but being so close to yarn of virtually any sort makes me go a little nutty sometimes. He then asked me if I liked the color green. Hmmmmm. The darker colored ones are Patons (not too shitty) wool and the other ones that have more convoluted coloration are something so cheapo and terrible that I won't even mention the name. Come to think of it, I don't even know off hand what the name is. Anyhow, it' absolute crap but I like the colors they come out with.

Maybe the next day or the day after that, I stopped by FiberWorks while waiting for a prescription of my mom's to be filled.......two towns or so away.

The maroon yarn is something from Universal. We just started carrying the company at the shop, but we didn't get in any of this stuff. The other yarn is some new stuff from Online, producer of the yarn in my fabulous orange socks. In all honesty I probably wouldn't have actually bought the stuff if Rene hadn't been so kind as to go out of her way to show me where it as on the shelves and show me a poster of it. Its interesting and stripes in a very oddball sort of way, bu I'm just not really feeling the jacquard (or however one spells it) yarn at the moment. And the needles....ahhhhh, the needles. Pretty, pretty, cheap, plastic needles. I love them so. I had to run out to Micheal's to pick up something random and naturally couldn't go without getting myself a prize, too. I've been wanting these needles for a fair amount of time because I like the colors and truth be told, I really don't care too much about using plastic needles for things that aren't teeny tiny.

A few days later I had to go back to Michael's in search of paper Easter grass for a basket I was assembling for my grandpa.

This yarn is extremely pretty, and feels a bit like an old brillo pad. Oh well. I'll suffer through. It's really not that bad and I figure when I combine it with the boucle, it'll be better.....slightly. I really like it though and think it'll make a nice scarf. I like he way the pink and brown goes together.

Speaking of pink, look what just came in the mail!

Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock in Tickled Pink and Flame. Yay! Clearly, my mental status is flailing. I think that maybe subconsciously I'm getting nervous about the prospect of being dirt poor while I'm in grad school. By buying a non-sensical amount of yarn now, maybe I'm just trying to set myself up with a little something nice for later.

Oh, and just to feel just a weeeeeee bit better about the yarn purchases. here is a little baby WIP shot.

In case you can't tell, it's part of a Monkey. That seems to be the definitive thing to do nowadays. This is the Cracked Canyon colorway from BMFA in lightweight. I LOVE it. In fact, I love it so much that no sock pattern was deemed worthy for it. I had some massive trouble at first since I seemed to hate everything that would perhaps detract from the yarn. The pattern may be a bit busy for the yarn, but I'm fine with it and I think that's about as close to being very happy with a pattern as I'm going to get. BTW, a new color palette is being being released this coming week I believe. I'm a tad panic stricken that they'll remove some of the colorways that I'm still stalking. I hope not.

Sad day

My guinea pig Angel passed away at about 3:15 this morning. I'm very, very sad about this. He was seven, maybe even eight years old. That's quite a run for a guinea pig. He was one of my most favorite guinea pigs of all time.

That's him on the lower right. The cowlicky one with the white nose. It's sad to even look at the picture because everyone in it is dead now. Angel used to like to chase Beau around and bite her tail. Sad, sad, sad......

The worst part is that I knew he was dying for a few days. He got super sick yesterday morning and I kept checking on him all day. Finally, at about 7, I thought he was dead and I went and made him a little coffin and dug a little grave. When I went to get him though it turned out that he was till alive, and we just had to wait until early morning. That was horrible beyond belief. At least now he's not suffering or anything. I HATE burying animals though. I can think of few things worse than having to deal with all that. I'm just not cut out emotionally for such things.

Alright, not much else to report. I haven't been knitting too much.....or at least have nothing to show for what efforts I've made. In fact,I pretty much am moving backwards knit-wise because I decided last night that I need to frog my Caruso socks due to sizing issues. Once I get that sucker on my leg I'm fine, but I just can't deal with the fight of pulling it over my heel. I keep feeling like I'm going to snap all the slipped stitches in half. No good. Hopefully the rest of the week will be more cheery and I'll get more fun stuff done.