Please pass the crack pipe

So about a week ago I got a burst of inspiration for a pair of socks, and spent that evening trolling the internet searching for the perfect colorways for my vision. Lo and behold, I found the seemingly perfect handdyed yarns, at Blue Moon Fiber Arts, home of Socks that Rock.

Now, as some of you may know, I tend to approach things that have rabid fan followings with some degree of trepidation. Plus I seem to have some aversion to joining in with said rabid throng. So I have spent the last few years reading the odes to Socks that Rock in the blogosphere with a fair bit of salt. Not to mention dismay that people can get so worked up over some sock yarn. I read the stories of Blue Moon selling out of yarn at fiber festivals across the country, and people getting into fist fights over hanks of StR and thought "How could they be so silly?"

Well, I still think it's a pretty silly thing to get so het up over, but I have more sympathy now that my own shipment of StR has arrived. Two skeins for my secret design project, in Blue Moonstone and In the Navy (the perfect colorways I had imagined, just perfect), and one skein in Korppi, since I'd read/heard so much about the Raven colorways, just to try it out.

The colors of Korppi are more or less impossible to photograph, but it's black with beautiful green and purple overdyed sections. The other two skeins look pretty much like the above pictures. Now if you don't mind, I've got to wind some center pull balls and get swatching.

Boo can't decide which she likes best

Toxic finally finished

Fiber: Superwash corriedale top
Colorway: "Toxic", Hello Yarn Fiber Club November fiber
Specs: 3-ply, 14 wpi, fingering weight, 515 yds in this skein, not sure of the weight
Spinning: singles spun with short forward draw, worsted style, at 10:1. Plied at 5:1 (this was my first "real" 3-ply (i.e. not chain plied), so I did it slowly.

I actually had a plan when I started spinning this fiber (more details here). I wanted to end up with a yarn that had two plies more or less the same color, and one ply of a varying color throughout. I'm not at all convinced that it worked out terribly well, but I like the finished product.

A couple of notes about the plying: usually I end up over-plying to some degree. I don't mind overplied yarn, and it's never bad enough to be an issue, but this time I decided to do something a bit more technical. I counted treadles for each length of yarn, putting in the same amount of twist for each length. I think the end result is a bit underplied - it doesn't obviously twist in the skein, but the plies look a little loose to me. It also doesn't seem as round as the chain plied yarns I've done previously, but that may just be due to there being less plying twist. While I didn't mind the treadle counting (much), next time around I will use a higher ratio so I can get more twist with less treadling.

I've still got some singles left, which I'm going to chain ply in sequence for a little mini-skein. No idea what yardage I'll get, but it will make a fun stripey something. The intensities of the colors are just amazing!

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I stumbled across Deb's blog recently, while looking for sock patterns, and I've been inspired by her monthly tallies. Well, it's more like I've been amazed by her monthly tallies - talk about production! - but it struck me as a good way to keep track of what's in progress and what's actually been finished. So here are my stats for January:

Finished:
Rainbow socks for the gift pile
Toxic superwash sock yarn

In progress:
Ivy - I started seaming this up last night, hoping to finish it in January (and completely forgetting about the whole knitting the neckband issue...), so it's going to be done soon. I only hope it's done before it warms up to 75 degrees for good.

Started:
Blanket for Devil - to replace the precious blanket lost at the Houston Marathon Expo
(planning stages) Sock submission for summer Knitty - waiting for the Blue Moon fiber goddesses to ship out my goodies.

Sometimes I worry about myself

Case in point: riding home on the train tonight I found myself staring at a fellow passenger's pinky brown extensions and wondering what the yarn would look like if I spun up her hair.

A nice heathery tweed I think...

Christmas FOs, Part II

It's long past time for me to post the second half of the Christmas FOs, although I don't have finished pictures for all of them.

1) Zeebee for my brother

Pattern: Zeebee by Schmeebot
Yarn: 2-ply handspun Colonial heather top from Woodland Woolworks, 4 oz, approximately110 yds, bulky weight (more details here)
Needles: ummm...10.5 maybe? No idea
Gauge: I know I had to measure this to get the right numbers for the pattern, but I have no idea what it was. Something like 3.5 sts/inch I think
Comments/mods: I love the construction of this hat, but the numbers I got from the pattern generator would have made a hat that came down past my earlobes (too long as far as I'm concerned). And I would have run out of yarn with one quarter of the hat left to knit. So instead of casting on 38 stitches, I cast on 30 and used the directions for the short rows that came with the 38 stitch version from the website. I was impressed that the handspun held up as well as it did, what with repeated frogging to get the right size. The yarn made for a squishy, warm hat that my brother loved.

2) Trekking stockinette socks

Now finished...

Pattern: my own, standard stockinette sock with one by one ribbing, short-row heel
Yarn: Trekking XXL, colorway 120(?), and Knit Picks Essential in ash for toes and heels
Needles: Knit Picks options dpns, size 1 (2.50 mm)
Gauge: about 32 stitches/28 rows per 4 inches
Comments: Size 11.5 socks are really big! But even so, I had enough left over to make a mini-pair of socks for Boo:

3) Felted clogs

Ready for the washer

Pattern: Fiber Trends felted clogs (Rav link) for the in-laws
Yarn: maroon pair: Brown Sheep Lamb's Pride and Knit Picks Wool of the Andes held doubled
blue/green/red pair: WotA held doubled
Needles: 10.5
Gauge: no idea
Comments/mods: I didn't make any modifications from the pattern, since this was the first time I've made them. Since, however, I have found a mod where you can knit the soles to eliminate almost all the sewing up - I'll definitely do this on the next pair I make. Pretty quick to knit, and the pattern is pretty straightforward, although it took me at least a pair to wrap my brain around it completely. These were gifted in the unfelted state, with one clog in each pair left to knit, but I finished them up before we left the in-laws, so technically they weren't late, right? Plus I could custom felt them to size, which was a good thing for the fit. But boy, had I forgotten how much Lamb's Pride sheds when felted! Talk about big red goobers in the washing machine...

Two other gifts have previously had their day in the sun, so I won't repeat their stats. That covers the Christmas knits I think. If I get more pictures of the gifted objects, I'll post them.

FO: Rainbow socks

Last Friday on the bus I managed to finish the Rainbow socks and weave in all the ends. Hooray for a pair of socks in ~3 weeks!

Pattern: Rainbow socks from Magknits
Yarn: Lang Jawoll Aktion, 420 m/100 g. This pair used up maybe 2/3s of the ball, so there's plenty left for some kid socks
Needles: Knit Picks Options dpns, size 1 (2.5 mm)
Comments/mods: for whatever reason, these socks seemed to go by really quickly. I really liked doing the short row sections - something different is always good. Instead of increasing after the ribbing, I cast on the number of stitches needed for the leg in the cuff - I was planning on working the long version (6 short row sections) and wanted to have a bit more give at the cuff since it was going to come up higher on the leg. I really like how the colorway stripes in these; it reminds me of a zebra.

This was my first time using yarn over short rows (I've always done wrap and turn in the past). I thought this technique worked really well for the body of the sock leg and foot, but I was a little dubious about the heel itself.

It does make a nice decorative line for the heel (and boy did I luck out with the color placement or what?), but it might be a bit holey for my taste. Unfortunately, I can't tell for sure because these babies are nowhere near big enough for my clodhoppers, as you can see:

Rainbow sock for someone with petite feet with my somewhat stretched-out Wyvern for scale

I also loved the toes on these - for someone who is scientifically inclined and way over-educated, it never occurred to me that you could do toe decreases in any other spacing then every row or every other row. For these toes, you decrease every fourth row, then every third row, then every other row, then every row, and they come out perfectly. Genius! I'll knit these again, and I've been thinking that some Noro sock yarn and a few more stitches around might make these babies actually fit me. But that's for another day...

These are destined for the gift pile (yeehaw!) and I'll have to figure out who in my not-so-long list of people worthy of knitted socks has feet the right size. And might like the colors. Finishing these so quickly has made me interested in trying to knit a pair of socks each month for the entire year. This would do wonders for the sock yarn stash, and if I switch off knitting a gift pair with a pair for me, I'll be well shod come next winter with woolly goodies. So that would make February a "me" sock month. I'm having chickens trying to decide whether to jump on the designing bandwagon one more time and work something up for summer Knitty (which only gives me a month!), or tackle Azure. I've got just the right yarn for both, and some ideas for the design, but what it will come down to is timing, and whether I can find a suitable lace pattern in the next few days and get started. Time to get swatching I suppose.