Fiber Friday: The end is in sight

A few days ago, I snapped. Really snapped. I couldn't face the prospect of anything more having to do with purple cabled yarn. So I turned on "Gladiator" and spent the next couple of hours turning this

into this.

That's the top that Devil dyed over Easter break. I'm calling it Mermaid yarn, in an attempt to get her more excited about it, and I'm planning a mini-Tappan Zee, maybe with a fish scaley lace pattern to complement the yarn.

But just to prove that the purple yarn is being finished up:

I've got four skeins finished, two more bobbins full, and 2.5 bobbins of 2-ply left. I can bang out a full bobbin of the cabled yarn in less then an evening, so I'm hoping to have it done by the middle of next week. And maybe the Mermaid yarn will be done as well!

Lions and tigers and cashmere, oh my!

In the midst of plying a bobbin a night, I've been getting some work done on the Knit Love Club May socks.

Halfway through repeat #1:

Halfway through repeat #2:

The leg calls for 2.5 repeats, but I think I might call it good at 2. I didn't swatch and I'm a bit concerned that my gauge is a little too big with the needles I'm using, and I don't want to run out of yarn.

And I must say that, sadly for my budget, I may not ever be able to knit with yarn that does not contain cashmere again. Oh dear!

FO: Nice GAMs!

Pattern: GAMs by Taya Schram, for Sock Madness IV
Yarn: Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock, colorway Irving Park, 1.6 skeins (~350 yards)
Needles: US 0/2.0 mm
Start/finish: 30 April - 25 May 2010.
Gauge: 10 stitches/14 rows per inch
Finished size: 7.5 inches from cuff to bottom of heel flap, 8 inches foot circumference (unstretched)
Comments/mods: The third pattern for Sock Madness. I've had this yarn sitting in the stash for more then 5 years, and it was high time to move it along. I was very entertained by the way the yarn pooled into stripes on the leg and foot.

It broke up a bit around the heel, but came back together nicely. I knit the 77 stitch version of this sock to try and make sure they would fit my size 10 (US) feet, and the stretchiness of the stitch pattern meant that I had no problems getting them on.

The heel design is called a strong heel: there's no heel flap, but you increase two stitches on the sole/back of leg stitches as you go down, making a kind of reverse gusset. This makes it easy to carry the stitch pattern all the way down the back of the heel.

This was a really fun pattern to knit, with an easily memorized repeat, and I'm happy with the way it works with the fairly variegated yarn. I was a bit worried that the stitch pattern would get lost, but that wasn't the case.

These got finished just in the nick of time, because guess what arrived today?

May's Knit Love Club package. Some gorgeous yarn (Spirit Trail Fiberworks Sunna in "In Dreams"), a beading needle and a week package of purple beads. What you can't see from this shot is the rest of the fiber content: 75% SW merino, 15% cashmere, 10% bombyx silk. Excuse me while I swoon...

Fiber Friday: Stage 1 is completed

And it only took a month!

I was so excited at finishing bobbin #9 (that small, unfull one at the bottom right), that I wound it off into a ball and started Stage 2 plying immediately. One viewing of "Serenity" later, and I'm into bobbin #8, and have almost a full bobbin of cabled yarn. It looks a bit different from my sample, i.e. thinner and less bouncy, but I'm hoping that impression is due to 1) the yarn being under tension as it goes on to the bobbin and 2) the lack of fulling finish.

I was also interested to see that the 2-ply showed a similar, if less dramatic, color gradation as the singles:

I kind of wonder if the finished yarn will do the same, but since I plan to skein this stuff up, wash it, and stick it away in a dark corner until, oh probably October, you'll have to live in suspense for a while. Try not to let it keep you up at night.

The search for the perfect buttons

So I've been wearing my new Tappan Zee around without buttons, but I was very interested in seeing how it looked actually done up the way it was supposed to be. This is a new sweater silhouette for me, and I wanted to confirm that, yes it is quite flattering, before I run out and knit 42 more top-down-yoke-sweaters-that-fasten-just-at-the-top.

After a long day at work (and an Ironman Friday at home, so he could be on Child Duty), I headed over to my semi-local sewing store and spent a while perusing the button collection. After several rounds through the displays (maybe, no, no, no, omg hell no, maybe, no, no, no), I stumbled across these babies.

Dark blue/navy with iridescent green and purple stripes. Just perfect.

And the done-up verdict?

(please excuse the bad T shirt color and the streaky mirror)

Yeah, baby, yeah. Top-down yoke is good. Which one should I do next?