Stitches Haul, Day Two

We didn't do as much shopping on Sunday, but I managed to buy yarn for seven pairs of socks just the same.

To the left is a new sock yarn called Aussie something or other, purchased from the Have Ewe Any Wool booth. To the right is a discontinued sock yarn, Jojoland cashmere/merino, which we picked up for a fraction of its retail price.

I can't remember if I've told the story here of the black cashmere socks from Target. About three years ago, I found a pair of black cashmere-merino-nylon socks at the local Target. This was long before I ever anticipated ever knitting socks, let alone becoming a complete addict.

The black cashmere socks were special. They were warm -- I have a metabolic disease and have to fight hard to stay warm in these Chicago winters, so the socks quickly became favorites. Plus, they actually fit my little feet. Most socks are too big and sort of spin around and bunch up inside my shoes. This was the first pair I'd ever owned that didn't do that.

I scoured all the local Targets looking for more of these socks, and found only one pair. I wore those two pairs until they were literally threadbare and falling apart. It made me sad beyond words to have to throw them away.

And it's because of those socks that I took up sock-knitting. So when I saw the Jojoland cashmere-merino blend, I had to buy skeins in every color. You can call it nostalgia for the Target socks. Or you can call it lack of self-control in the market. But whatever you call it, you can bet that my feet will be happy this winter.

Stitches, Day One

If you ever needed proof of my insanity, here it is, spread out on the hotel room bed in dazzling yarny goodness.

Starting at the bottom, we have a mill pack of Jaeger variegated purple and cream for a clapotis and matching hat. Behind it, three mill packs of Elsebeth Lavold AL for a FLAK aran. Next to it, three mill packs of Valley Farms merino in a luscious plummy purple for another aran. Upper right, five skeins of black Berroco Peruvian to be the background color of a felted stranded bag.

Still with me? That batch I just walked you through was all purchased at the Webs booth. 75 skeins for under $300, tax included. I'm still sort of dazzled by that. Less than four dollars a skein!

All the rest of it is sock yarn. Want the rundown? Sideways, front and center, are two skeins of Shelridge Farms 3-ply Fingering Wool in black. Next to that, two skeins of the same in a nice solid mid-gray. I discovered Shelridge Farms yarns at Stitches last year and was eager to buy more this year. It makes lovely, comfy socks.

Next to that, the big blob is some purple sock yarn from Brooks Farm, absolutely gorgeous stuff.

Directly above the purple Brooks Farm is some STR in the lagoon colorway. That's the skein I had to cast on Right! This! Minute! (The sock is currently at the heel flap. I adore it. It is singlehandedly restoring my love of all things sockish. Take that, jaywalker!)

To the left of the purple Brooks Farm and the STR lagoon is something rather special. Two Somethings Rather Special, truth be told. The first is that tight, pale skein of sock yarns from Macintosh Yarns, purchased from The Fold's stall. Even at Stitches, surrounded by scores of vendors, The Fold mojo is still powerful, and the proof is in this yarn. The yarn is part of a group of Harry Potter-inspired yarns. Mine is called Invisibility Cloak, and I fell in swoony-pink-heart love with the shimmering creams and greys. Someday I will show you a close-up of this yarn so you can all covet some of your own.

The second Something Rather Special is the big multicolored hank next to the Invisibility Cloak. See that loose mass of purple, pink and green? It's sock yarn from a brand new vendor, and it's splendid. You can't see it in the picture, but there are little multicolored flecks spun into the plies. It's really yummy. I'll knit it soon to show it off, and then we can all go crazy trying to figure out how to buy this stuff, because guess what? Hand Painted Yarn Company doesn't do mail order, or internet sales, or direct-to-public sales except for at fiber shows. (I really regret buying only one skein of this stuff. I intend to stalk their company at future yarn shows to make up for my uncharacteristic frugality in their stall. What the hell was I thinking?)

The final skein in this picture is a second skein of STR in a colorway whose name escapes me. More gray. I don't know what the attraction is with gray sock yarn lately but I couldn't resist the smokiness of this one.

OK. So that's what I bought on day one. Tomorrow, I'll either show you my (not as extravagant) purchases from day two, or will give you a little narrative of our adventures at Stitches. But I've been wicked busy since returning ... please forgive if "tomorrow" stretches a few days. I do want to share -- my goodness, I've had a new BFF Lily Chin for days now, and still haven't gloated here about it. tee hee! -- but life is basically pissing all over my parade this week. I hope to be back to a normal schedule soon, but so far, no good.

Hi-Ho!

To Stitches I will go!

Through this long and challenging week, Stitches Midwest has been the light at the end of the tunnel. Knifty Red and I have been anxiously planning this weekend ever since the last Stitches Midwest.

Last year was the first Stitches outing for both of us. Because we knew nothing, we figured we'd go for the day Saturday and get our fill. Ha! Now we know that there is no way to ever get enough of this event. Your feet might give out. Your wallet may turn to dust and blow away. And still, you'll know that there's some incredibly cool thing around the next corner just waiting to be discovered.

Last year, for example, I discovered Shelridge Farms yarns. Love the stuff. Last year was also my first time fondling Socks That Rock. I had just learned to knit socks after about 20 years of basically knitting rectangles. The STR booth was a big deal to me.

This year, I feel more on top of it. I signed up for a class with Lily Chin (gasp! OMG! THE!! Lily!! Chin!! faint!) on short row shaping. We'll see if I absorb a single bit of information during that three-hour class. The first hour, I'll probably just be dorking it up and trying to absorb the fact that I'm in the same room with Lily Chin (faint!) and that she's, you know, sharing droplets of her ocean-vast greatness. The final hour I expect to spend in a near panic because the class is almost over and I wasted the first hour being too starstruck to say anything other than maybe uhrm and ack.

But the middle hour. Ah, the middle hour. That's the magical transition hour where I stand a chance of being able to learn something and maybe even speak a language vaguely resembling English. I'm hoping for some tips on short rows that will help me finish that Silver Creek cardigan. If that magically happens, that sweater will forever be known as the one I knit after taking a class with OMG! THE! Lily! Chin! (faint!)

Side question: Is it entirely too dorky to ask her for her autograph? I figure I might be safe asking for a picture of us together. But an autograph? Maybe on one of the ninety-eleven Lily Chin patterns I have laying around my house? I dunno. Might be too embarrassing even for me, and I have very little sense of embarrassment.

I blocked out the entire day Saturday to spend in the Market. I won't tell you how much cash I set aside for the market, but it's a lot. More than I've ever dreamed of spending in a single day -- hell, in a single month -- on yarn.

Will I spend the lot? We'll see. Recently, I've come to feel that I have enough yarn. This is a sort of cyclical feeling. I feel I don't have enough and buy like crazy. Then I feel sort of yarn-saturated and stop buying for a while. Gearing up for SOS07 made me take stock of my sock yarn -- I've managed to collect more than two dozen skeins in a year despite almost constant sock knitting -- and taking stock of my sock yarn made me also think about all my sweater yarn. There's a lot of it. And I want to knit it. I don't want to just buy it and store it.

That said, I know full well that I'll probably hit that market and get high on yarn fumes and want to buy everything in the joint.

So Saturday is for the Market, and Sunday morning is for me to make an ass of myself in front of one of my knitting idols. Sunday afternoon, I'll try to swing by Franklin's 1,000 knitters photo booth and do that. Then there's all the end-of-show stuff in the market, and that fills two days.

One final quick note. Thanks to all of you who have been so kind and supportive while the family has contended with Shedir Lady's illness. She's doing much better. The doctors are astounded by her progress. One of them, in trying to convey the magnitude of her recovery, revealed that only one in two thousand people survives an aneurism like the one she suffered. But she didn't just have the aneurism, she had all kinds of other things go wrong, any one of which could have killed her. Three surgeries later, and they're talking about extubating her tomorrow. She even regained consciousness briefly yesterday. It's enough to make you believe in miracles.

An Indulgence

This is the Gypsy Girl I picked up at Nana's Knits last week. Colorway is Blackberry Brambles, which is really the perfect name for it. There are all these ripe berry hues, a touch of dark, leafy green, and lots of purple so dark it's nearly black. Totally irresistable.

I haven't knit the second Gypsy Girl Stormy Skies sock yet. Too busy dealing with other stuff. But I liked knitting the first one well enough to want more of this yarn, and thanks to Nana's Knits, it was pretty easy to indulge that wish. She's got a mountain of the stuff, and each colorway is more tempting than the next.

Things remain crazy here. The Shedir lady survived her second surgery yesterday, but the outlook is bleak. The family has been attempting to come to some sort of decision about how far to push treatment when she is clearly dying. She's already in a place where she will never again be able to eat but, if she survives, will be on a feeding tube and dialysis for the rest of her life. She has not recovered consciousness since her initial collapse. We don't know if she ever will.

Stitches is mere days away, and I haven't been able to think about it at all. My plan is to take some time tomorrow to get myself organized for that. It will be a welcome relief to get away for a couple days and do nothing but yarny stuff. Talk about the perfect escape!

Thanks for all your great ideas on how to keep the young daredevil entertained. I ended up taking him to the Simpsons movie (hilarious), and then at his request we went to Target. The kid loves Target. Gee, wonder why? Whenever we go there, he scores some great stuff. This time, he got the Teenaged Mutant Ninja Turtles movie and a Pirates of the Caribbean game for his Playstation. What can I say. I'm a soft touch.

Then we came home and played Pokemon, which clearly is an evil plot to make adults feel stupid and confused. But it also kept him from bleeding or breaking any bones, so I'll put up with massive headaches over trying to figure out the nuances of battle cards. Stoopid game. ::pout::

Now I'm trying desparately to get some work done before the next bout of insanity. Shedir lady is scheduled for surgery number three tomorrow. It's promising to be a rough day.

Niner!

Wowsa.
Nine finished socks.
Four pairs plus one single sock.
One sock OTN.
46 days.

That picture above is the finished pair of Bearfoot in the wildflowers colorway, made with my standard sock recipe. I know this looks an awful lot like the other Bearfoot pair I finished recently. That's because they are an awful lot alike.

Here they are together.



















Wildflowers on the left, Flathead Cherry on the right.

Both have a neutral (brown for Wildflowers, black for Flathead Cherry) and a base color (purple for Wildflowers, burgundy for Flathead Cherry). The neutral-plus-base forms the bulk of the color repeat.

Both have a shot of a really hot, bright color every so often to wake up the eye. (Hot pink for the Wildflowers, sour cherry for the Flathead Cherry.) Both show some color variations to the base color, especially where blending into the hot accent color.

And both have flaws due to my knitting clumsiness! I screwed up the kitchener graft on one of the Wildflowers, and I found a small (repairable) hole in the toe decreases on one of the Flathead Cherries. I promise to knit better next time.

In other news...

I don't mean to be ignoring this blog for days in a row. Other things are taking precedence right now.

Some of you might recall that Shedir hat I knit for a family member with cancer. She fell critically ill over the weekend when an aneurism near her heart ruptured. It's a miracle she lived through the rupture and the surgery to repair the rupture, but we'll take it. She has to have a second surgery tomorrow. Other organs are showing signs of strain, and we're more than a little worried about all this.

Some of you might also recall a story or two about my daredevil nephew, the boy who likes to dare himself to do dangerous things. Well, he dared himself right into a broken collarbone yesterday. How convenient that the cardiac ICU is such a short walk from the ER. ::eyeroll::

I think tomorrow I will be skipping out on work to watch the daredevil child while others are on hospital watch during the second surgery. His arm is in a sling and his mood is as rambunctious as always. Anyone have any ideas for how to entertain a one-armed 7-year-old maniac?

Eight! (And a Half)

So now the count stands at:
8 finished socks
3 pairs plus two single socks
2 more socks OTN
43 days

This is the Mountain Colors Bearfoot in the Wildflowers colorway. Nice stuff. I'm going to have to fix the toe on the finished sock, though. When I was kitchenering it shut at stitch 'n bitch the other night, the sun was right in my eyeballs and I had trouble seeing what I was doing. The result is very sloppy and I missed a stitch. Yay, me!

In jaywalker -- make that jailwalker -- news, I took the jaywalker out of knitting jail, knit a few more rounds on the gussets, made a few notes about where to leave off the jaywalker patterning, and put them back in jail. This yarn, a Regia self-striping, is hard on my hands. Makes me wonder if I'll be able to wear the finished socks at all if the yarn is this harsh. It's rough enough that I'm swearing off buying any more Regia sock yarn. I mean, I've knit a half-dozen or more pairs of socks from Regia, and none of them have been this tough, so maybe I'm overreacting.

But I just don't see the point of taking a chance on a yarn that burned me when there are so many other lovely yarns to choose from.

Like the Gypsy Girl. Details of a recent indulgence will follow....

Gypsy Girl Sock

Trying something different to see if the picture will post properly. Or at all.

I have other things to show you -- sock number eight is completed, and here I'm still trying to show number seven. But first I need to solve this blog problem!