Finally!! FO's

I FINALLY got the baby blanket not only finished, but photographed and sent too! And the baby's only 4 weeks old. Amazing! The blanket I knit for his 4 or 5 year old sister is still folded up in my bedroom. I possibly should have sent that along, too, but I've not exactly sure how late in childhood a blanket is an appropriate gift. Anyhow, on to the good stuff.



And a really blurry shot that sucks, but at least it shows the blanket in its entirety.



Frankly I'm too lazy to type out all the yarn information, and actually I don't even know the colors offhand. The ball bands are long gone. If you're really curious you can check it out on my Ravelry project page. Here are just the basics-

Yarn: Dark Horse Fantasy in various shades of blue with a bit of black and tan
Needles: Size 7 circ's
Pattern: baby size Modern Log Cabin Blanket from Mason Dixon Knitting
Mods: Instead of using the 4 colors the pattern called for, I used something like 8 and just put them in where I saw fit.

I can't tell you how thankful I am to finally have that monkey off my back! It shipped out today and should arrive on Friday morning.

Next order of business: Zombie Socks!



It was really hard to even *try* to get the pattern details or an accurate color, but here's my attempt.



Pattern: Zombie Socks by Emm1e on Ravelry
Yarn: BMFA STR lightweight in Rook-y from the Raven series
Needles: Size 2 circ, worked Magic Loop
Mods: I did 5 pattern repeats on the leg instead of 3 and had to add a few repeats onto the heel.

These socks are also my first pair for the 52 Pair Plunge....which I joined with some crack-pipe aspirations in my head. I am SO far behind, but I'm not too pressed about it. I'd rather enjoy what I'm knitting than feel like I'm knitting with a gun pressed to my temple. Tonight I plan on finishing the first of my second pair, the Spring Forward socks from the summer Knitty. Pictures of that to follow.

In non-knitting news, guess what I'm doing right now?!?! Oh yeah....I'm just sitting here watching DOG THE BOUNTY HUNTER!!!!!!! Evidently A&E has decided that while Dog may be a bit of a "character" he may not be so much of a racist and have put his show back on the air. You know what this means!! My obsession can continue! I knew the new season was starting in July, but you can imagine my surprise when I heard that familiar riff and the voice of Ozzy as the show came on tonight. I totally spazzed out. Big time.

Alright, off to work on my sock!

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.

More Monkeys!!

IMG_2249
Originally uploaded by knitglit

I joined a KAL on Ravelry and actually did the knitting!! I think I was just really excited to use this yarn, and who can turn down a Monkey sock? I have the first one completed....obviously, I guess, and am about to do the heel flap on the second. The colorway is KawKaw and was the sock camp colorway at this years Camp Crow's Feet. I wasn't able to go, but Cindy was kind enough to nab a skein for me. If anyone's interested in the colorway, Tina just put it up on the BMFA website today.

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.

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:)

Short Attention Span

IMG_1371
Originally uploaded by knitglit

As I perusing the forums on Ravelry Monday I happened across a post saying that the new Magknits was up. A lot of the time, I'm not too thrilled with Magknits. I'm a touch picky about patterns and of the 5 or so they offer I usually only will even concider 1 or 2....if any at all. Anyway, I popped over there and saw what I consider t be my current socks of destiny. I love them. I didn't wait a heartbeat before immediately going back to Ravelry and adding them to my queue. In a more normal persons life, they might have cast on for them or something like that, but not me. Later that night I began. I decided to use some STR lightweight because 1) It always stripes for me and 2) I could get away with using larger needles to accommodate my massive feet. As you can see, they're not exactly striping in the short row pattern. I still think they look cool and I like the way they showcase the color of the yarn. Next time I'll try them with some of the Trekking I have laying around so I can really see some self-striping action. Oh! And I also got to use my new, ultra-cool Knitpicks Harmony circulars. They're purty.....and sharp as hell! Watch out for that.

Bellatrix

Finally, I present you with my completed Bellatrix socks.

Pattern: Bellatrix from Socktopia.net

Yarn: STR Mediumweight in Hard Rock

Needles: US 2.5 circs

These socks took me a loooong time to finish. This was due entirely to the fact that I decided to try knitting them on one short circular needle, which I hate, hate, hate. I just couldn't get into it. It hurt my hands, the heel flap was a pain in the ass to do, and the stitches were looking all spread out. I was not happy. I stopped knitting the first sock when I was about 8 rows from the toe and just couldn't pick it back up. After a month or so I finally switched the stitches over to two circs and finished it up. I was a bit nervous about knitting the second one because I figured the stitches would be much tighter than on the little guy. It turned out okay though.

In other news- I am S.I.C.K. I thought my throat felt a little funny on Friday night. Saturday I woke up at about 3pm and my entire throat was numb and very swollen. Within a few hours I had the full on super-congestion, big head feeling, weak muscled nastiness upon me. I was half delirious throughout the night because of illness and heavy medication, but I got out of bed pretty early due to my nose continually running. I made an effort to make myself look at least normal and went to work. I was the only one there today and I had a class to teach. My students sat there with me for awhile and then collectively were like," Uhhhhh.....how bout if we don't do this today". So they went home and I sat the alone in misery. Now I am going to sit here at home in misery, but WWE Unforgiven comes on PPV tonight so all will be well. The Undertaker is coming back from an injury and nothing can stand between me and the Undertaker.

My "special" order

As was leaving for work the other day, I came across an interesting package thrown onto my front porch. Inside was this:

Direct from the poppy fields of Nicaragua!!

Just kidding. After some fluffing it really looks like this.

purty.

I have a strong feeling that this shall morph into a Hot Lava shrug......or whatever that thing is called. Clearly I'll have to dig through my old patterns a little before starting. Oh......and I guess I should finish at least some f the 50 million other projects I have going.

In related news, I finally broke down last night after setting up and organizing my new yarn shelf and cast on for Lady Eleanor. I'm in love with it already, even though I was only able to knit three tiers of it while I psychotically sat up until 7 am watching The Devil Wears Prada, for like the 100t time in the past week because HBO seems to have decreased its movie pool to about films. I had never seen the beginning of the movie though, and by the time I hit where I had picked up before the shawl had gotten the better of me and I was hooked. Additionally, I have to say that my secret project of amazing skill and proportions is coming along very well. Some of you already know of this project of insanity. The rest of you will just have to wait a bit. I'm sure it will (not) blow your mind.

Oh!Oh!Oh!!!! And everyone MUST go out and buy this stuff NOW!!

You would have thought that I had found the Holy Grail when I took this bad boy out of the bag. I actually pulled it out, had some kind of mini convulsion and had to shove it back into the envelop so I could try to absorb the glory I had just seen. It's STR lightweight in the new Loch Ness colorway. A must have for all!! I love this colorway as I have loved few before. It even eclipses my obsession for Manos Stellar.

Oh rats. I hear the war cry of CSI:Miami coming on so that means it's time for me to go mock-vomit at David Caruso. My yarn and I will have a splendid time together. And if any of you see me getting a little crazy....like carrying my new love around and talking to it in public, feel free to take action.

Yet another FO

This one has been a long time coming. I don't recall if I had previously mentioned that I had started my Pomotomus socks. This was way back, like in April or May. I had been on a roll with the sock production and the new found obsession with STR, bu once I started the Pomotomus pattern it all kind of halted. There was something I wasn't getting about the pattern and I didn't like reading all the charts.....and the sock ended up tossed under a pile in my bedroom with about two inches of cuff completed. At some point of cleaning, the sock was found, placed in a bag, and moved into my office with the rest of my yarn. The other week I was looking for something else and I came across it. On a whim, I picked it up to see how much I still hated knitting it. Surprise, surprise......I didn't hate knitting it at all! I don't know what was wrong with my brain the first time I was fooling with the pattern, but it's not hard or confusing at all. There was one row of the pattern that my stitch count kept getting messed up on and I still have no idea why. It was easily remedied by adding in another stitch.

Here's a more accurate shot of the color.

Pattern: Pomotomus by Cookie A.

Yarn: STR lightweight, Mustang Sally coloway

Needles: size 2 circs

Modifications: left out some of the toe shaping due to reasons discussed below.

I became super nervous about running out of yarn when I was about halfway down the foot of sock#1. I ended up having just enough, though if I had knit the whole foot correctly I surely would have run out about one pattern repeat short of finishing the second sock.

I guess my absentmindedness saved my ass on this one. On the chart for the top of the foot, there's a point where you have to start adding stitches onto the end of the pattern repeat. I got wrapped up in watching TV and just kept knitting the regular pattern on the third (and final) foot section. It was easy enough to replicate on the second sock and didn't interfere with the fit, so all was good.

Stash Busting!!!

I did it! I actually broke down and knit something with stash material! Actually, I had to buy another ball of yarn for this, but I consulted some people on this and the consensus is that it can still be considered a stash busting project. Here it is:

And to get a better view of he colors:

Pattern: Artyarns Cashmere Diagonal Scarf by Iris Schreier

Yarn: Brown Sheep Lamb's Pride Worsted (black)

Paton's SWS in Natural Plum

Needles: size 8

Modifications: I tried following the directions exactly but the numbers for the foundation section just weren't adding up for me. I ended up skipping the slip stitches and just knitting. I tried to duplicate this on the end section but it got all nasty looking. Something just ended up not right with my stitch count. I tried to fix the little bit of fug that showed up in the last section while I was binding off and it worked, for the most part.

The other big (and perhaps even bigger) news for the day is that my fancy new sock blockers arrived! Even though I don't have too much of a purpose for them, this excited me to no end. Here they are sporting another FO, even though this particular FO is slightly older.

Pattern: Monkey by Cookie A.

Yarn: STR Mediumweight in the Alina colorway

Needles: size 2 circs

Mods: I omitted all the stitches and just knit the whole thing. This made it go a lot faster because I wasn't having to keep track of numbers, but it also left me with much less give. They still fit though and I think these massive blockers will stretch them into shape.

I also got this nifty stitch marker as a bonus.

A funny thing happened on the way to the airport.....

The night before I flew out, I had many, many errands to run. No big surprise there. The day had already started off in a flurry, as I had to be at work at 10am and I had gotten essentially no sleep the previous night. I had put on this new shirt that had a deep v-neck and grabbed a camisole to put on once I got into the shop. I remember thinking at the time that if there were any customers there when I pulled up, they were likely to think that we were a "yarn shop" much like Madame Flora in College Park is a "palm reader", if you catch my drift. All that worked out fine and I got into work without being confused for someone with a for sale sign attached. I did my bit there, then ran to just about every store one could think of where I could pick up last minute items for my trip. I finally got home and happened to catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror.

well hello there

I have no clue how long I was wandering around like this, but I'm sure it was long enough to suitably make a giant ass out of myself. Note to self : make sure camisoles fit, even if they're worn underneath clothing.

In other, more yarn related news, I was alerted to the fact that a box had arrived for me during my second week away. Yes, a nice, big ol' box. I've moved up in the world. Meet my new friends.

These are, from top left to bottom right, Spacedust, Amber, Jailhouse Rock, Backstabber, Mesa, Minestone, Calico, Beryl, Januaryone, Brick, and Spinel. The Backstabber, Beryl, and Brick are STR Silkie. All the others are STR lightweight.

One of thees days I'll post a picture of something I've actually knitted with all this stuff. I do have FO's, but they're still hiding in my suitcase.

Still trying to Update

I'll tell you, for being on a semi-sabbatical, I just can't keep on top of things. I guess that's part of my "all or nothing" life trend. The fact that I'm madly trying to get stuff loaded onto Ravelry before I leave doesn't help. Ravelry itself is super great, but Flickr and I....well, we don't always get along. I'm not particulary familiar with the service so I don't know if it's Flickr itself, or just my slow ass computer that makes it take literally like 20 minutes to upload a liited number of pictures. Then I have the added confusion of using two photo publishing services. As far as I can tell, and I realize that I'm very likely mistaken, I can't post pictures directly from Flickr. In my head though, they've already been uploaded ad are ready to go. But thn I have to go back onto photobucket and re-upload them for blogging purposes. Hmmm.....confusion. I'll get it worked out. Anyhow, I've gone on another bit of a start-a-million-projects-at-once rush. I think I kind of hit a brick wall there for awhile because I was pumping out really simplistic projects while I was amassing large quantities of more difficult patterns. Then, when I started in on all the "Hold up! What's this 70 row chart doing in here?!?" patterns, I felt a little blah since I couldn't really just sit in front of the tv and knit away, or even really knit at work. I guess really I only started 2 or 3 pairs of socks that I really just got the icks about. Unfortunately, Pomotomus was one of those pairs. I had high hopes for those. I'll finish them eventually. Another was the pair of Monkeys for my mom. I don't have an issue with tat pattern, just the yarn and the freakishly crappy needles. I finished the first sock but never got around to casting on for #2.
Okay. Enough of what I haven't done. Here is something that I like quite a bit and it is now complete.....though not kitchnered because I seem to have misplaced all of my darning needles.

And a close-up of the pattern.

This is STR mediumweight in Henpecked. The pattern is Stansfield 196 from More Sensational Knitted Socks. I wish now that I had continued the pattern down the foot, but this will have to do. I like the pattern enough to make a second pair and I'll just do the foot on that future pair.

I also started a pair of Mata Hari socks in STR Alina. I just wasn't feeling them though so I frogged it last night. Still, here is what it looked like.

I love the colorway and I love the pattern,just not so much together. I re-cast on for them in STR Amethyst, but I'm not even done the ribbing yet. We'll see how that works out.

In non-knitting news, I cut all my hair off. Voila!

It doesn't really show in the photo, but the underside of the back of my head is shaved. Not shaved bald, but way, way short. I really like it and it's super easy to take care of.

That's all for now!

Sock Tale

I don't know what it's been lately with all my sock mishaps. There's the one pair that I kept finding in dirty parking lot puddles. There's the one where I waited and waited to use this pattern that I really liked, only to find that it doesn't show up a single bit in the yarn.....Oh! And what's the deal with me never being able to get a sock over my heel anymore? My heels don't look like they've suddenly expanded greatly. My legs, maybe. Heels, no. Anyhow, remember how I ordered all that sock yarn the other month and it all accidentally came in at once and I thought I was gonna pass out? I stayed true to my prediction and plunged right into the Fire on the Mountain.

preeetttyyy

With help from my mother, I was able to successfully wind it into a center-pull ball using hands and the winder, sans swift. I don't know why it never occurred to me that this could be done. I recently read somewhere about doing this, and while it was a tad troublesome and undoubtedly more time consuming/messy than doing it with a swift, it worked none the less.

I decided to keep the pattern about as simple as a pattern can be 1) because I didn't want to obscure the color at all and 2) I wanted my socks quick. I opted for plain stockinette socks, loosely based on the Sock Love pattern at Chic Knits. Then this happened.

fug

As unappealing as I found the severe, creepy tie-dye-gone-heinously-wrong appearance of this, I received multiple compliments on them. I kept thinking."Well, maybe they're not so bad." and kept knitting, in case you're wondering why I worked all the way thru the heel while a large part of me loathed them. I like my heel, so I new it wasn't the necessarily the sock yarn itself.

I did some poking around on the internet and after I saw what some of the less goofy socks looked like, I knew what had to be done.

ouch!

Luckily I was able to salvage the ribbing because I've developed quite an aversion to doing it. All I did was decrease 4 stitches around and this what I ended up with.

worst FO shot ever

Please excuse the fact that it looks like my feet are propped up on a mountain of trash. They're not, really, but I quickly cleaned off the table afterwards. Since completion, my socks have travelled to Atlantic City, where I mistakenly hoped they would be some sort of good luck charm, and got to go on the beach. Then my f*cking shoe broke exposing a large chunk of metal that poked and rubbed away at my heel. I was able to quickly get another pair of shoes, but I thought my socks had bit it. After I got them home and washed up, I thin they'll survive. They must have had some luck in them after all. If I can figure out how to send my phone pictures to my printer, maybe I'll show some of our adventures. Maybe I'll also get off my butt and take some shots of my finished Quill Laces Socks, which I realized earlier that I had never done. Oops.

Disclosure

Maryland Sheep and Wool was very exciting for me this year, to say the least. I didn't get to go last year because I was foolishly attempting to save some dough for a trip to France that was supposed to be happening a short time after the festival. That trip got cancelled not too long after I had missed out on all the yarny goodness. Anyhow, back to this year. I had a plan. All I wanted to do was get there, get some STR in colorways unavailable online, and get out. I had a party to attend later that day and I'm really not in need of any yarn. I made this plan one, maybe two weeks prior to the festival. As the weekend approached, I came across more and more accounts of STR selling out in mere minutes and herds of knitters storming the booth as soon as the it opened. I devised a plan to get to S&W really early and just wait. I heard more and more tales of empty yarn bins. I began to panic. At some point a few nights away from the festival I actually had a nightmare about lack of yarn. Scary. So Sheep and Wool day came and I got up super dark and early (in the 5am hour) and made it up to the festival by around 7. I can honestly say that I may have been the first non-worker sitting around that day knitting on a bench. By 7:45 others had joined me waiting outside barn 3, aka the STR barn. By 8:15 I actually had to go stand in line in front of The Fold because others were flocking in and I'd be damned if I was going to get up that friggin' early to be beaten out by a bunch of late-comers. When they finally undid the little rope that was between us and the yarn, it was anarchy. Luckily, since I was right up in front, I was essentially thrown face first into a giant wall of STR mediumweight by the 50 or so people pouring in behind me. It was heavenly......though I bit panic stricken.
So here's what I ended up with.

Brooks Farm Duet......lovely

Little Curly Mohair Handpainted by The Flock Bransonas

Blue Heron Rayon Metallic in very pretty greens & purples

Gypsy Girl yarn in Angela (pink) and Goblin (green/purple)

Oh yeah.......and that STR I was talking about?? I got just a weeeee little bit of it. It looks a little something like this......

Wooo!!! I hit the motherlode. What can I say?

I wish I could tell you all the colorways, but I had to quickly stash the goods and didn't have enough time to write it all down. I'll give it a whirl from memory.....uh, holy goodness, I think I know it all....at least the majority of it. What can I say, I know my STR. Here it goes, from top left to bottom right. Algae, Crazy Lace Agate, Carbon Dating, Hard Rock, Neptunite, Red Rock Canyon, Highway 30, Lemongrass, Alina, Country Clare, Pebble Beach, Azure something or another, Romancing the Stone, Heart-something, and Amethyst.

I wasn't satisfied (somehow) with the first 13 skeins I got in the early morning so I ho the booth again a little later and picked up some more!! Hello, Psycho! My crafty coworker later pointed out to me that I picked up a duplicate colorway during my initial buying frenzy.

Country Clare

While it is probably one of my favorite new colors, I just wasn't down with the duplicate. I had to go back and exchange it for something else on Sunday. I got there a little too late and there were slim picking to choose from. I ended up getting this......

....which is a merino/tencel blend from BMFA in the Tiger's Eye colorway (damn, I good with the color names!). It's quite nice and I'm not too sure what I'm going to do with it yet. I also picked up a good number of patterns, all of the sock persuasion. I have a feeling that they might just come in handy during the next few months. I have no idea why.

Okay, that's it. I finish school in just a few days now. I'm so through mentally that I hope I can wait for the next few days to pass before I run off screaming in the middle of the night. I think I can do it. Oh, and I have at least one FO to show....maybe even a second by the time I get around to posting again. Excitement!

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 !!