Yay, September!

I've been knitting a good bit lately but really don't have too much to show on account of the crapfest of weather we've been having. I had to give up on the hope of any usable natural lighting coming my way when the September installment of RSC came in. I tried. I waited. But screw it. My new Knitpicks needles came in and I want to cast this sucker on! If you're in the sock club and for some reason haven't gotten the yarn yet, go away now.

Woot! This color is soooo badass I can't even be near it without getting a minor twitch. The colorway is called Tide Pooling and the pattern, as I suppose you can read for yourself in the picture, is called Cloning Anemone Rib. Truly as rockin' as the club name might suggest.

Here's the yarn alone.

Lovin' it!!

I'm going to cast on for them tonight and attempt to do them 2 at a time, magic loop style. I've been working on a pair of plain vanilla toe-up's with my Potomac colorway doing the 2 at a time and I'm still not sure how I feel about it. My Second Sock Syndrome has reached such proportions that there's really no other option at this point. I'm kind of not thrilled with knitting socks toe-up anyway, but they really do seem to fit me a lot better in the end. I also don't actually have instructions for knitting toe-up socks 2 at a time via magic loop so those might take some figuring out. Perhaps some further planning would have been better. These socks though.....they're top down, for which I have a whole book of instructions. I'm hoping that 1) my wrists will hold out for awhile tonight so I can actually work and 2) that switching to my new super pointy and long Knitpicks Options will make it easier on said wrists. I'll let you all know how it works out.

May Rockin' Sock Club!

**********SPOILER***********

I got my package pretty late so it's unlikely that this would actually spoil anything anyway. Better safe than sorry, though. I love it!

The colorway is called The Incredible Shrinking Violet. I didn't take a pic of the pattern because they never come out good but it's designed by Yarnissima and called Cleopatra's Stockings. Very chic. There's been a lot of grumbling about how so far we've gotten all semi-monochromatic colors this year in sock club. Personally I don't mind at all. Tina wrote in the dyer's notes that this will probably be the last of her color study so the rest of the shipments should be more multi colored. Still, even though all the colorways thus far have been shades of the same color (reds, greens, and now purples) I don't consider them shaded solids at all. March's "Lucky" was the closest, I'd say, but there was still a huge difference in the colors.

In other knitting news, I'm almost done with the baby blanket. I have about 20-some rows left of the blanket body and then the border, which I'm going to have to go pick up more yarn for. Then I have the fun task of weaving in all he ends. Ick. A new motivating factor arrived today by way of a box from Webs. That Kureyon I ordered to make my Curilque Coverlet came in and I must say, if you all don't already have No. 196 in your stash, go get some NOW. Even if you don't love knitting with Kureyon, this one is a must.

Leafling

I believe I mentioned that I had finished my Leafling socks the other day. Voila!

In trying to take a picture of these, I had the realization that I am apparently rather retarded in the area of putting on socks straight. Oh well. We can't all be good at everything. I also found that it's very difficult to get a decent photo of your own feet/lower legs while trying to simultaneously bend over, keep you long pant legs from dropping down, elude shadows, and keep a balanced hand. Here are some of the pics from the first finished sock, but we'll just pretend that I planned to use them here as detail shots rather than their real intent/origin, which was just me being hyperactively excited about having a single sock and thus taking approximately 1000 photos of my single foot. Yeah...."detail shots"....that's it.

I hope this is a better shot of the design.

Semi decent shot of the heel detail.

These socks were a pretty fun knit. They used a heel from Cat Bordhi's new(ish) book New Pathway's for Sock Knitters: Book One. Instead of doing a heel flap, stitches were added along the sides of the pattern panel so by the time the heel turn was worked, half the foot was already knit. Pretty sweet. The ribbing on the heel continues down to about mid sole, too, which is a new one to me. I think it looks pretty snazzy.

On to the specs!

Origin: RSC March '08

Pattern: Leafling by JC Briar

Yarn: STR Mediumweight, Lucky colorway

Needles: size 2 circular

Mods: none

I guess I should also add that this is the first pair of socks I've completed using the magic loop method. I began using the one needle out of necessity and just stuck with it. I found it to be pretty intuitive in practice so I didn't check to see if I was doing anything "right". It all worked out though, so yay! Considering that I often lose needles if they're not practically sewn onto my hand, magic loop is my friend.

Hope everyone is having a fun day, and for those not in my immediate area I hope you're having better weather. It sucks here and has for a number of days. However, the rain and general grossness outside makes for good cozy knitting inside.

Woot!

I got in my shipment from BMFA a few days ago. Rarely have I ever gotten such a thrill from a yarn shipment. Almost everything I took out of the box became my new favorite thing. And the Single Silk?? O.M.G! It is sooooooo nice. I don't have the patience to post a picture of each of the items received, but more detailed info can be found either on my Ravelry account, or on Flickr. In fact, I think that the individual photos should be rotating thru that little Flickr badge off to the left right about now.
In knitting news, I FINALLY finished my Leafling socks from the March RSC. More details on that to follow.....once this shitty weather goes away and I can take decent pictures. Today I think I'm going to cast on for a pair of Crosswalker socks with one of my new yarns. I love them all so much that it's going to be hard for me to decide which. No new progress on the baby blanket, because I suck and am very, very selfish.

The Power of Sunshine

I took advantage of the nice weather the other day and photographed a good deal of my newer stash (i.e, sock yarn).

I plan on doing some more of this advantage taking today. Not so much with the photographs, but with the leisurely outdoor knitting. I FINALLY finished a sock from the RSC last night and I'm eager to get into the 2nd as I'm semi afraid I'm going to run out of yarn. Size 11's and sock yarn yardage don't always get along so well. Especially when you're a super-tardo like me and decide to knit an 8 inch cuff while all the while sitting there thinking, "hmmm, I hope I have enough yarn!". Oh well. We soon shall see.

Also (keeping fingers crossed here) I might be getting in a mega packed order from BMFA today. They put up the new/returning colorways awhile ago but I was trying to hold out for the the Inside Out sock pattern to be posted before I ordered. Tina had told me that it would be up a few weekends ago, but no such luck. I decided to just go ahead and order. I'm VERY eager to do the Inside Out socks though, and now that I'll have the yarn it's going to eat away at my poor brain. I'll get it eventually though. Not like I don't already have enough to keep my hands busy.

Off to lounge in the sun!

I'm Baaaack

Yes, yes. I know it's been forever and a day since I last posted. Sorry. All I can say is that I'm one of those people for whom the more time there is to do stuff, the less stuff gets done. Conversely, if I'm super crazy busy, I go into frantic mode and manage to get absolutely everything I need done and then some. I'm still adjusting to not having such huge deadlines always looming over me and when given the spare time, I just kind of flit around trying to decide what it is that I'm really supposed to be doing. Anyhow, that kind of explains it.

Sooooooo.....I have lots and lots to share. My game plan to get myself back into the swing of blog maintenance is to post a little spread over a few days. Seeing as how I'm so all over the place, some of the stuff may be (severely) out of chronological order, but oh well. To start, I'll begin with the present.

Most of my sock club subscriptions have expired, which is a little sad. I had some massive issues with Paypal that kept me from being able to renew anything. Maybe that's for the best seeing as how my sock yarn stash has grown to legendary proportions. I think we all know where my heart really lies, and *that* sock club is still in full swing. Yes, I am referring to the 2008 Blue Moon Fiber Arts Rockin' Sock club. I don't really remember if I ever even posted my first shipment....I'll have to investigate that....but here's the second.

and a semi fugly close up of the yarn

The colors really don't show well at ALL in these pictures. My house s so dark and with the schedule I was keeping, sunlight and I were distant strangers. I really like the color, and am liking the pattern too. I wasn't sure about it when I first looked at it, but once I really saw the details of it I'm digging it a lot more. I'd really like to say that these socks were completed, but a little touch of masochism got in the way. It looks a little like this.....

It's a Modern Log Cabin Blanket! Excitement.

I recalled that my impregnator nephew and his fiancees baby is due quite soon. So, in my brilliance, I decided to make a large, multi-colored, smaller gauged blanket for them. Smart! It's actually coming along quite nicely......attractive, more complex looking than it really is, and yet still on the easy knit/semi-speedy side. The only issue I'm really having with it is that some of the joints are a little......icky.

I'm hoping that when I wash it and all that good finishing stuff, I can kind of conceal some of the messiness. If not, eh, it's really not all that noticeable unless you're really looking at it.

Well, that's about it for now. I have my camera charged and ready to go so hopefully I'll be spitting out some FO shots soon. Not that I'll actually be spitting out FO's. That's one of the joys of not blogging for a long time. I have a lot done already:)