robknits

First FO of the year???

My nonfinishing has reached horrific levels.

  I just finished the Sockotta socks.  See?  Done toe-up, reverse flap-and-gusset heel, my default leg stitch (a garter rib over 4 inches) and a sewn binding at the top. Started summer 2008, soon after I moved to San Antonio -- in fact, this is probably the first yarn I bought after moving here.  The second one then languished, a victim of Second Sock Syndrome, but here it is, finally.

So I decided to add it to the Finished in 2009 album on this blog, only to realize there is none.  Can this really be the first thing I finished this year???

I went back through the blog to check. 

• I have one finished sock from the Applelaine Best Friends sock yarn.  Sock #2 has not yet been started.
• I finished knitting the copper Bias Toward Lace scarf but have not blocked it.
• I have half of the Sausalito jacket knitted.

Conceivably, then, I could see another pair of socks, the scarf and the jacket finished by the end of the year.  And, I should remind myself, one finished tapestry.  Other things I worked on this year: several frogged projects, and the Swirl stole, of which I still only have a few hexagons knit. 

Still and all, pretty low production.  It is nice to have these socks done.

Yarn therapy

Sock progress -- I have finished the first Best Friend sock, with a picot edge.  And I have ripped out, yet again, the heel on the second Sockotta sock, have forgotten, yet again, to move heel stitches to the instep.  See, I stopped knitting socks and forgot some of the basics of my own pattern.  So I have to keep knitting socks, apparently, so that I do not forget.  I certainly have enough sock yarn stashed to keep going -- once I was silly enough to count up how many pairs of socks I could make from the stash, and that was so scary that I am NOT going to do that again. 

At the same time, tastes change, environments change and so sometimes you just need to add to the sock yarn stash anyway.  After a very startling day at work, I was delighted to be met by two new residents of the sock yarn stash -- the Almost Free Sock Yarn arrived!  On the right is Regia Cotton Java Color.  Color number is 1188 and it has turquoise, purple, red, charcoal and mauve.  While it is not sold as a stretch yarn, the label claims it is "uniquely stretchy," "incredibly stable," and "superbly comfortable."  Wow.

Accompanying the unique, incredible and superb Regia Cotton Java Color was a skein of Online's Supersocke 100 Summer Cotton Stretch in color #1158.  The colors in this one include turquoise (imagine that), blue and a warm variegated

toast color.  This one is indeed a stretch yarn. 

Getting packages is always fun, and I had come home from work after a day in which massive organizational changes had been announced to find looking at new yarn in beautiful colors is always a pleasant thing.  I am still employed, and still working at the level of a department head, but of a totally different department with totally different responsibilities. 

Good thing there was some beautiful sock yarn waiting for me, right? 

P.S. Got a chance to explore the stash that is Hill Country Weavers on my way home from a friend's place in Austin today.  An amazing yarn store.  And, keeping in mind the yarn therapy that had just arrived at home, I did not take advantage of the opportunity and did not add to my own personal stash while there.  But it was touch and go there, for a while...

Almost free yarn

Rainfall count is now 4.6 inches and counting.  And apparently it will continue, though we are having a few beautiful days before more rain is predicted.  So while they are not counting the drought over and done with yet, better days may be shining through.  There are green lawns and wildflowers all over town.

In love with wearing my wool-cotton blend pink socks, as mentioned in my last entry, a synapse in my brain fired and I remembered another skein of sock yarn.  I dug around in the yarn closet and found this -- no label, but I think it might be more Meilenweit Cotton Fun. No wait, I think it's Regia.   It is definitely a cotton blend sock yarn.  Then I got some more for kinda-free.  Kinda-free is when using your Paypal credit card has earned you enough points to redeem a $25 gift certificate, and you can use it wherever you can use Paypal, so you go to Wool Needle Work and discover they have Regia Java Cotton yarn for just over $10 (one skein makes a pair of socks) and Online Supersocke Cotton Stretch yarn for $13 (one skein makes a pair of socks).  So now in addition to having way too much wool sock yarn, once this stuff arrives I will have enough yarn for 3 more pairs of cotton-wool blend socks.  Oh yeah, I am also buying a skein of Meilenweit Cotton Stretch from a Ravelry stash, so make that 4 pairs.  The Online Supersocke Cotton Stretch also, of course, is a stretchy yarn, so we will see if that makes knitting with a cotton blend more pleasant. 

This too-much sock yarn spirals, though, in that unless I wear boots in San Antonio -- not unheard of, of course, in Texas -- most of my shoes do not lend themselves to sock wearing. They would be too snug, for one thing. So unless I start wearing running shoes to work as the weather gets cooler, I need to find shoes that go with handknit socks.  Oh dear.  I am being forced to buy shoes.  Especially since my boots are more trudging-through-Northern-winters type boots.

Continuing the sock madness, I got sucked into thinking about using laceweight yarn to make socks.  It was a discussion on Ravelry, of course.  It's insane, and would require using something like size 000 needles, which poke painful holes in my fingers, and would take forever to knit.  But it would also make nice thin socks, and I have some Zephyr in the stash and the silk in the Zephyr would be long wearing....

In the meantime, I screwed up the heel on this pair of neverending socks in Sockotta.  I can never repair mistakes I make in a heel, and kept screwing up the gusset stitches as I tried to unknit parts of it, so I ended up ripping back to the point where I will once again start increasing for the gusset. 

Way too much time is being spent on Ravelry searching out additional knitting projects, just immediately after deciding maybe knitting wasn't the appropriate fiber-using habit to have in South Central Texas.  Nevertheless, here I am working on two pairs of socks, and planning on more particularly at the moment the Nanner socks from WendyKnits), fantasizing about laceweight cardigans (I think I will wind the Prism lace yarn I have today), and even thinking about knitting this cardigan, a pattern from Knit Picks.  Mine would have more buttons, and I have been thinking it would substitute for a light jacket for what passes for winter here in San Antonio.  So I guess I am continuing to knit.  I would get more socks done, though, if there were more tennis on tv.

L'shana tovah to you all, for this new year of 5770.

Tennis and rain

 I've been watching great tennis on tv, which does wonders for my knitting.  See?  First I ended up with a nice snug heel and a deep instep, and then -- just a day or so later -- most of a sock.  All while Kim Clijsters and Rafael Nadal played amazing tennis. 

It has also been raining in San Antonio, after two years of almost no rain.  At first it started very gently, so we began to get some much needed rain but no flooding.  But since the beginning of September we have gotten more than 2.5 inches whoops now it's 3.4 inches of rain, and so the blocked-off streets and low-level flooding has begun.  The good news is that the worst of the heat has broken, and that I now find temperatures in the high 80s to be early fall weather (which is really very funny).  Today when I was out it was in the 70s -- bliss.  The yards have already greened up, at least those parts that are not actually really dead.  And with the cool weather and rain today, I actually wore sneakers... and socks.  Some of my favorite handknits socks -- these.  They fit perfectly and the cotton and wool mix yarn is very comfortable to wear.  They actually encourage me to finish the Sockotta sock-in-progress, though I doubt they will be as soft as this Meilenweit yarn -- the yarn just doesn't feel very soft.

Unfortunately I can barely make myself knit a row or two on Sausalito.  No problems with it, I am just bored.  But talking to Kim, who is the friend who gave me the lovely blue yarn I am using on the current sock project, was wonderful, because she thought it made perfect sense for me to start a lace-weight cardigan.  I want to try the Featherweight Cardigan, as I have mentioned before, and have been fretting that perhaps I do not have enough of any one lace yarn stashed. I think I will need at least 1400 yards.  But I am beginning to think that the stash might contain a possibility, even if I want to make the cardigan longer.  Because while I only have 1320 yards of the two Knitpicks Shimmer yarns in the stash -- Lost Lake (a lovely heathered green) and a heathered blue) -- and only 1250 yards of Helen's Lace, I do have  1460 yards of Prism Lace wool in the color Periwinkles,  which I bought in Seattle. That's it on the right.  And 1400 yards of Mystical Creations Yarn Spun Silk, image on the left.  But I would love to have more -- I hate to start a project worrying about running short, and I am not happy with the cropped jackets and sweaters I have.  But even the much larger size of the Featherweight calls for 1400 yards, so I should be OK.   But stashing means I should use now a color that appealed to me then, whereas if I didn't have stashed yarn, I would go ahead and buy plenty of lace yarn in a color that appeals to me today.   More fuel for rethinking having a sizable stash.

Except, of course, now that I have posted their pictures, I do like them both.  My concern about using the Mystical Creations silk is handling such a slippery yarn.  I am worried about winding it.  Should I wind it into a cake using the swift?  Pull from the center or from the outside?  If I pull from the outside I can't use a yarn bra to keep the yarn under control.  Maybe I should leave it on the swift, and knit from there.  Or wind it into a big ol' ball by hand.  Let me know what you all think.

Rain!

The sky went black about a half hour ago and I held my breath, hoping hoping this storm would not just blow right over us.  We are in a very severe drought here, though I think it is really unfair to have very humid weather and drought at the same time.  About 20 minutes ago it started pouring, and I hear thunder though I don't see any lightening.  A little bit of small hail mixed in, but a wonderful downpour of rain.  It is already much less dramatic -- here's hoping it continues to rain at this current pace for a while, even though I have plans to drive to Austin.

When it first hit, two young teenaged girls across the street were holding on to each other, screaming, and running into the middle of the street to dance in the rain.  So cute.  It is odd how exciting it is to me now when it rains.  Water is so scarce and so valuable and then, suddenly, it simply ... Falls.It just falls from the sky.  I run to the windows to watch.

Mindless knitting on sock toes has continued.  So actually it is no longer a sock toe and is actually a sock foot -- not as cute but closer to being a sock. The colors in the Apple Laine Apple Pie sock yarn colorway Best Friend are actually deeper than in this photo.  Take a look at the link for the company's image of this colorway.  The orange-y color is really somewhere between what it looks like in my picture and what it looks like in theirs.  A plain stockinette sock, though I think I will use a pretty heel stitch and a picot top.

I missed going to the Maryland Sheep and Wool festival.  Not that I needed yarn, or fleece, or more handpainted silk top, or another drop spindle, but the trip, the day at the festival, would have been fun.  Instead I bought myself a used copy of Else Regensteiner's book Geometric Design in Weaving.  It arrived this morning and I have flipped throuh.  Then I went and found some graph paper and some colored pencils, so I can really work through it.  She demonstrates geometric design across various styles of weaving, including tapestry, twill and block designs. 

The weaving class I will be taking this summer starts next week.  I am not taking the class devoted specifically to tapestry weaving this time.  Instead, I registered for the studio weaving class.  The teacher for that class is also a tapestry weaver, but he uses horizontal floor looms, rather than upright tapestry looms, and creates designs influenced by Navajo rug weaving.  So while I will be working on a four-harness loom, I am going to take advantage of his own specialty and do some more tapestry technique.  I will decide on size and weft during the first class.  I might even be able to make a small rug.  The usual tapestry workshop is held on 3 consecutive weekends, from 10-3 on Saturdays and Sundays.  Taking this studio weaving class instead will have me going every Thursday evening til the first week in August -- a nice change of pace.  I am really looking forward to it.

Catching up

     It's been so long between blog entries I am scaring relatives.  Everything is fine.  My job is very demanding in August, which is the end of the fiscal year in the Texas state system.  Fortunately I am finding it very interesting but tend to get home late and unwilling to even turn on the computer.

     It's also been a long time between blog entries because of my knitting slump.  I am continuing to knit, working on the mate to the Sockotta socks, and making (slow) progress on the Swirl shawl.  By the way, while I like the Jojoland Melody yarn, it does not stand up well to frogging.  I decided my last hexagon was poorly done and in a dramatically different gauge than the others.  I decided to rip it out and to my dismay discovered that the yarn frayed while I did so.  So I am not sure I would use it for socks at all.  Especially since I tend to frog heels once or twice on each sock.

     During Chatters, Robbyn suggested that the change in climate might be the cause of my knitting slump.  That's a possibility.  But I have collected interesting cotton, linen and rayon blend yarns that I could wear here but haven't dived into those projects.  I did also distract myself from knitting with tapestry weaving, but am not weaving anything at the moment.  I am working on designs and that really is where my creative energy is going.  No surprise I am sure to anyone who reads this blog, but my focus with the tapestry weaving is in intense color.  Certain contemporary artists have been inspirational in this process.  One is Wolf Kahn.  I have asked the art librarian here to buy a couple of his books, and bought a calendar of his work for myself.  I also found a very inspirational book call Raw Colour with Pastels by Mark Leach.  The cover alone set my spirits flying, and my creative juices flowing -- for tapestry.

    So I reorganized my knitting, and while watching Olympic diving was working on the sock.  I think, to really get back into knitting, I have to get some of the creative juices and attention focused there too.  That little stash of unusual Habu yarns was meant to get me thinking about some art knitting projects.  I am slowly working my way toward that, and once I get started, will post my progress.  Meanwhile, when I get home tonight I will add pictures of the WIPs.

News, reviews and hexagons

     Not much blogging going on here chez Rob, but there has been some knitting.  First the news:  one complete Sockotta sock, completed on an unbroken wooden needle.   I knit this toe up, as usual, until I decided not to knit it anymore.  I began my usual K1P1 rib and then decided I didn't like it, so I just did a sewn bind-off without any intermediary steps.  Knitting this was fun -- the yarn does not produce the moaning sounds knitting with handpainted 100% merino can produce, or merino and silk, or merino and mohair... ahem.  But it was fun, and quick and did not hurt my hands.  And the size 1 Knitpicks Harmony needle is also just fine, thank you.  No bend, no breaking.  So I started this one's mate, just in time to take it on a trip with me.  Another good reason to use Harmony needles -- they don't scare anyone in airports.  I do like wearing the cotton blend socks I have made, so I foresee more Sockotta in my future.  Especially since the colors as they appear in the skein have always attracted me.  Here's a picture of the sewn bind-off you can embiggen if details appeal to you.  

     The review.  Did the latest Vogue Knitting just come out, or did I miss it due to moving pyschosis?  Did anyone notice the amazing fact that the shape of the Kaffe Fassett sweater does NOT resemble a cozy for a Volkswagon Beetle?  In fact, it has SHAPING!  I have always been tempted to knit one of his projects and then hang it on the wall as art.  I still remember realizing that one that I loved was marked "one size fits all" and measured 57" around.  Actually should have been marked "one size fits no one."  Though Erma Bombeck said it best when she asked "One size fits all what?"

    This issue was very interesting and full of creative design, if not very wearable for me.  There are some gorgeous items for very thin people, like the shrug worn with a wedding dress.  The one that went on my gotta-make-it list, though, is the last one in the thumbnails on the Vogue Knitting magazine web page, the blue lace tunic.  I am already considering yarns.  I'd love to do it from stash, especially since I have been hands on with that stash since realizing I was going to move.

     In the meantime, the lovely yarn on the left (Jojoland Melody in colorway 8) is slowly becoming the first few of the 80-something hexagons that make up the swirl stole.  Each hexagon is only 16 rows and once I got the right needles, and found a row counter, it went pretty smoothly.  The right needles were Knitpick Harmony double points, so I am knitting Melody with Harmony. Ha!

 Despites my doubts about the color before I started, I am really liking how it is developing.  But since there are 80 something hexagons to knit, I don't know how quickly this one will get done, even though I am not going to have to sew the hexagons together.  That sort of thing does not happen chez Rob.   Though again, this will be good travel knitting. It is still very small, and I can amaze the muggles by knitting with 4 brightly colored needles. 

Busy

I wrote a long blog entry with photos and links and Typepad lost the whole thing.  Snarl.  Emailed apology notwithstanding, snarl.  It's driving me a bit nuts tonight too.

But. I'm trying again.  In the continuing projects arena, the Sockotta sock is speeding along.  I am past the heel and onto the leg of the sock.  I was going to use a garter rib pattern, but didn't much like how it looked with the self-striping yarn, so I ended up going back to an old favorite of mine.  Row 1: Knit around.  Row 2: K3, P1.  For an example of what this looks like on a solid-colored sock, take a look at Knitty's Thuja. Looks really nice with the self-striping yarn, and is going very quickly.  And I have still not broken the Harmony needle.  This sock actually fits really well, thus breaking my streak of carefully knitting socks that don't quite fit.  I am breaking another rule, by knitting this sock before knitting sock 2 of the Moving Socks, and by not rewinding the large skein of yarn into two balls so I can knit both of these socks at the same time.  'S OK, though, since I only have one of the Harmony size one needles.  But I do have to finish both pairs before actually casting on for yet another pair of socks.  The threat of SSS (Second Sock Syndrome) is just too scary.  I was going to use a heel stitch on this sock but as usual forgot as I started the back of the heel.  I like how the stripe worked out on the heel

The urge to spin has been lurking in the background for weeks.  With the studio room still in chaos, I have not yet set up the Columbine wheel, and the new-to-me Suzie is under a table.  But the drop spindles are lined up and ready to go. 

 It is fun looking at them lined up as shown in the picture below but this is not a great way to store them -- the heaviest part of the spindle is of course the whorl, and so if I touch any of them they fall off the shelf.  Left to right we have:

• One of my favorites, my little Jenny, a bird's eye maple spindle from Red Barn Farm.  It weighs an ounce and it has been great for spinning the fuschia handpainted silk roving I got a few years ago at Maryland Sheep and Wool.  A very reasonably priced spindle too that has the longest spin of any of my spindles.
• The Greensleeves Bare Bones.  A great basic spindle.  It weighs, according to my postal scale, about 2 oz.  My only problem is that the hook now spins inside the spindle.  The Greensleeves folks told me to send it back for a tune up but I haven't been able to bring myself to do that.  Very dumb.  Now that I want to, their website is missing lots of info, like their address. 
• Above the Bare Bones is the Greensleeves Tom Foolery.  Very pretty.  The postal scale says it weighs about 1.5 oz.
• Then, pretty but not much for spinning, is that little one made of two stone whorls.  It doesn't spin for very long at all.
• The next big, beautiful whorl belongs to Hatchtown's Amelia, bought at Maryland Sheep and Wool two years ago.  I raced over to their booth last year to buy another, but they hadn't shown up.  No new spindles are available on their website either.  If I remember correctly, it weighs about as much as the Tom Foolery.
• So, since I couldn't buy another Hatchtown in at the 2007 MDSW, I bought that beautiful spindle next to it at the Turnstyles booth.  That white wood is holly.  I haven't used it yet because it doesn't have a notch in the whorl for the yarn.  I need to find instructions for using a top-whorl spindle without a notch, or find a woodworker to put one in for me.  It weighs an ounce, which means I can use it to spin some of the other batches of handpainted silk waiting in the stash.

Finally, I picked up the Hatchtown Amelia and the gorgeous merino-silk roving I bought at Yarnivore last month (turns out it is Louet/Gaywool roving in the Jacaranda colorway) and started spinning.  To preserve the colors I stripped the roving into pretty thin strips, so that I didn't have to do much predrafting.  When you gently pull the strands to predraft, the colors blend a bit.  Spinning strips helps preserve the color variations. 

I am finding this easy to spin on the Amelia.  In fact, it might be a bit overspun, but since I am going to ply it, and that involves spinning it in the opposite direction, that's OK -- it should unspin a bit during that process.  The Amelia is much heavier than the Jenny, letting me spin a thicker yarn, and that is probably contributing to the overspinning.  But it doesn't spin for as long as the Jenny, or at least I haven't gotten it to that point yet.  I have 4 oz., I think, of this merino-silk in the Jacaranda colorway.  I haven't yet figured out what weight yarn I am spinning, though whatever it is I have been pretty consistent. 

I am still spinning the fuschia silk on the Jenny.  Once I fill the cop this time though, I am eager to try plying it.  I have a lot of it left to spin, but I am going to ply together what I have already spun and see what sort of yarn I have come up with.  I am thinking of knitting this into Sivia Harding's Diamond Fantasy scarf/shawl.  Some research is needed though -- everyone seems to use a heavier spindle to ply, which I suppose makes sense since the yarn you are working with is now twice as heavy (two strands of the original spinning).  I have to figure out which spindle I would use. 

I can't tell you how great it felt to find the following:

Hard to work without your tools!

As far as I can tell, I could find a knitting meet-up in San Antonio on Sundays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, a couple of Fridays a month, and Saturdays.  Some minor health problems have kept me home and going to bed at 8 pm, so I have missed a week's worth of meet ups, and miss other knitters.  I need to catch up!  Tuesday will be the first chance I have.  In the meantime I am going to keep knitting and spinning in an effort to keep from scratching the itchy spot a new vaccine gave me.  But I am going to be sneaky -- I am going to STOP looking for the missing Campanula project.  'Cause the minute I stop looking, I'll find it.

Doing what I said I would do.

Well, not so much.

A number of WIPs were reunited with their patterns.  Caches of knitting notions were unearthed and organized (where did all those crochet hooks come from?).  WIPs with their patterns found nooks in an artistic tower of wicker baskets next to the couch.  It was actually possible to sit down and knit.

So I did.  But not, of course, on any of the WIPs.  First, I had to try an experiment.  At Yarnivore, a member of the Alamo City Knitters gang suggested trying different needles when I said knitting with the cotton-blend sock yarns made my hands ache.  I remembered how I had snapped every wood or bamboo size 1 needle  I had ever used.  But... a brand new Harmony wood laminate size 1 needle had arrived in the mail from Knitpicks. You see, I was already thinking about trying it out, remembering from somewhere that laminated wood tends to be stronger than plain wood or bamboo.  So I picked up the Sockotta I bought at Yarnivore and the new needle... and WOW.  I have most of the foot of the first sock done.  And I have not broken the needle.  No real ache in my right hand either.  I had bought, in the same order, the Harmony tips in sizes 5 and 6, and I am about to go back and order some more in other sizes, as well as more size 1 circular needles.   The Sockotta sock went with me to the doctor's office and the lab for a blood test today (sinus infection #376,421,686.  Or is it 376,421,687?).  Considering there were no magazines in the lab waiting room, that was a life saver.

I also was able to go ahead and start another project that had been percolating for quite some time.  Several years ago, when I treated myself to Stitches West, I bought some gorgeous yarn at the Newton's Yarn Country booth that I have tried to photoraph several times, unsuccessfully,  for the blog. Here's another attempt.  (The yarn is actually more purple and less blue than this appears on my screen.)  It is one of their novelty yarns, with a contents label that makes it sound like it has a bit of every known fiber in its make-up.  Visibly identifiable ingredients include mohair and rayon.  The right pattern just never appeared.  Recently though it occurred to me that I might like to do Lou's Lattice Lace Wrap in this yarn.  Lou calls for Knitpicks' alpaca lace yarn.  The purple and copper mystery yarn is heavier than that.  Last night I wrapped it around a ruler, decided it gets 16 wraps per in (wpi), and went to look up what that translates into in knitting weights.  Turns out 16 wpi is a fingering weight.  So I pulled out the new size 6 Harmony needle tips and cast on.  The combination of yarn and pattern might work very well, and the wrap will be larger than one done in lace weight.  I am close to done with the garter border, so will see soon how the yarn looks in the lace pattern.  I am not adding beads -- this yarn has occasional flashes of shiny stuff in it already.  Now, though, I want more of the Harmony laminate needles. :>  Lucky Kim, she got a complete set as a Christmas gift!

Getting back to my needles

     The knitting meet-ups here have helped get me back into knitting mode and out of my stuck-without-a-project rut.  I did need something relatively simple, something to knit on autopilot but as I have said I got stuck when I thought of socks, immersed as I was in my new sandal-friendly environment.  But there was a sudden breakthrough.

     First, I fell in love with the Chevrolace sock pattern from Knitty's Winter 07 issue.  Not sure how I missed it the first time around.  Knew immediately that I want to use the Dream in Color Smooshy yarn that I have in the Wisterious colorway.  (The second from the left in this line-up of last summer's sock yarn splurge.) I couldn't start right away though since the Smooshy is not wound.  So winding that is on the do-next list.  (The other yarns in the picture, from left to right, are Cherry Tree Hill Sockittome in Moody Blues, Lisa Souza Sock! in Mother of Pearl, and Schaefer Anne in Mint Caramel Frappe.  All awaiting the perfect project.  I don't like the self-designed pattern I started with the Anne.)

     Sock-yarn blankets were also on my mind, as a way of providing a continuing mindless project.  The problem was I couldn't help trying to plan the colorwork on a mitered project, which was kind of beside the point.  Finally, I picked up one of the afghan or Tunisian crochet hooks I have, one too small to make a nice fabric out of heavier yarn, and started experimenting with bit of leftover sock yarn.

      I can't stop. 

     I love the woven look you get with afghan/Tunisian crochet.  And I love the motion involved.  But the relationship among needle size, yarn size, and fabric is quite different in Tunisian crochet than in knitting.  I am using a size G Susan Bates hook.  That's a 4 or 4.5 mm size hook, the equivalent of a size 6 or 7 needle, that I am using with fingering weight yarn.  In knitting that would get me a lacy fabric.  In Tunisian crochet, that gets me an OK blanket-weight fabric, but I really could have used an even larger hook to get a drapier fabric!  That's why I ordered such huge hooks to experiment with fabrics for jacket patterns.  As you can see, I am working in broad color groups with a few contrasting colors thrown in.  The result? I need to knit more socks to get more leftovers!  That helped reignite my interest in knitting socks too.  Isn't that funny?

I don't think I like the brown/copper bit I used in the blue-ish strip.  And I think putting together lots of strips will look as uninspiring (to me, but then, it's my blog) a grannie-square afghan.  So, I think I am going to make strips of varying lengths and then somehow put them together with navy blue sections, in a quilt-like kinda way.  Til then, though, I am just going to make strips of left-over sock yarn.

     So in addition to knitting Chevrolace out of the Smooshy Wisterious, I am also going to start a pair of all-stockinette socks with the  Apple Laine Apple Pie sock yarn in the Best Friends color Kim gave me as a going-away present.  I was also able to look back through the blog to discover what stitch pattern I had used on the Moving socks, done in Paton Kroy Eclipse.  So I can work on sock #2 there.  So with a sock yarn leftover project in motion, and 3 sock projects about to take off, I appear to be back in my basic knitting status.  But I still have to find the following:

• More sock yarn is hiding somewhere.  Missing is my stash of red sock yarns, including the gorgeous Mysterious yarn I bought from the Knitting Zone.  There is an APB out for red sock yarn on Inspiration Drive.
• The Campanula WIP.  I know I saw it somewhere.
• My knitting notions in a clear cosmetic bag.  Now THAT is critical.