On Monday we drove up to visit my parents for a few days. And of course there was the Sockapaloooza deadline to meet. I almost got the Dalarnas in the mail for Tuesday. Sometimes I forget that when you’re on an island things work a little differently. It turns out the airline that used to carry our mail got all delinquent with their rent payments to the airport and lost their accreditation, so they aren’t allowed to carry the mail anymore. This means the mail has to go out by boat, and that means the post office has changed their hours and now closes at 3:00. Not 3:00:27, which is approximately when I turned up at the door with my package. Alas, my most pathetic appeals could not sway the man locking said door. So the socks had to wing their way to my pal in the other Washington Wednesday morning before I boarded the ferry for a day hike on a neighboring island. But I’m pleased with them – thanks to those of you who suggested blocking on coat hangers. (Click for big!)

Specs:

Dalarna socks from Nancy Bush’s Knitting on the Road

Dale Baby Ull in cherry red

US#0 Addi circs

As I mentioned previously, I modified the pattern to replace the leg shaping with ribbing. Otherwise, I followed it as written. It has the swirling toe decreases that many people seem to dislike, as they produce a somewhat pointy toe, but I decided to trust Nancy. The blocking rounded out the toes a bit.

I really did knit these babies on the road – in Friday Harbor, WA; Portland, OR; Alpine, TX; Big Bend National Park; and Kansas City, MO. I just hope they fit my pal.

And now I get to await the arrival of my own socks. One of the perks is that I have an actual mailbox to watch. It’s my very first mailbox. Okay, it’s really Mr. Garter’s parents’ mailbox. But my mail comes there, too, and it’s a real novelty for me. Growing up we had a post office box because packs of rowdy boys tend to play mailbox baseball from their trucks. (We’re a little short of teen entertainment in my home community. At least we haven’t resorted to wholesale cow tipping.) Lots of people have mailboxes anyway, but my parents didn’t want to deal with one. So it’s quite a thrill for me to put the electric bill in the box and tip up the little red flag. And it’s totally fun when the postmobile heaves in sight.

Next up: Hourglass sweater!

After the wedding I’ll be kicking around southwest Texas for a week before we fly up to Kansas City for my uncle’s wedding. So I may not have much computer access. Just pray for me that there won’t be any trips to the ER to report when next I write.

Psst – did you see the Knitter’s Review today? Seattle Knitting and Fiber Arts Expo, baby! I’m there! If you’re in the area and might want to meet up there, please drop me a line. I really need to meet some northwest knitters.

So I give you this:

Olympic knitting, baby! Here I am at the Palasport Stadium in Torino, cheering on the Canadian men’s hockey team during their rout of Germany. Now we will have a moment of silence for the subsequent ignominious fate of said hockey squad, during which we will recognize that they were just setting themselves up to make the tremendous arse-whupping they’re going to dish out in Vancouver 2010 all the more satisfying. Just look at that woman in the seat behind me – she thinks I’m the whackest thing she’s ever clapped eyes on, including the five German guys down below us who are dressed as farm animals and (apparently) Little Bo Peep. Feast your eyes, lady. This is all in the glorious cause of Olympic knitting. How awesome are the gold medals, by the way? Totally better than the real ones, which look like those blingy model CDs they give music artists when their records go gold or platinum.

Okay, now it’s time to pack another box and roust out some odds and ends for dinner. I think it’s going to be spicy black bean burgers and pasta with garlic and olive oil…the remaining contents of the kitchen are pretty uninspiring. I can’t wait until the move is over. We’re going to have all kinds of changes around here. There’s a snazzy new design in the works and everything. I promise, it’s gonna be good! Just stay tuned and bear with the intermittent posting. Thanks!

She knit me a penguin! This cheered me up and really moved me. Sarah and I picked up the sticks about the same time, and Sarah quickly became the most prolific hat-knitter I knew. All last winter she cranked out hats and scarves like she was clothing an army. But Sarah doesn’t like to knit from patterns, so it means even more to me that she followed the Knitty instructions for this adorable little fellow, and tackled such advanced techniques as short rows and complicated color changes. I really love him.

The above photo also provides a clue to the other major pick-me-up of the weekend: the first Spiders yarn-dying party at Marie’s house. It was epic, folks. I don’t even know how many people were there, but it was at least fifteen. We took turns soaking and dying our yarn, and although the party began at 1pm, it was 9:45 before my bout with the dye bottles wound up the show. Since it was already so late, I took my yarn home and steamed and rinsed it yesterday. Sitting overnight really helped it soak up the dye; the water ran clear immediately. Here it is in the rinse pot:

(Laudamus te, O Olympus E500!) And here it is today, almost dry:

I can’t wait to wind it up and see how it will look. The pumpkin spice, teal, and chartreuse dyes took beautifully. Although I really saturated the deep violet and denim segments, they came out a little paler than I would have expected. And the brown I used to transition the skein on the left from pumpkin into denim and teal seemed nearly black coming out of the bottle, but ended up as a color I’ll name “dusty mouse”. Next time I’ll know to be very liberal indeed with the blues and browns. But I’m delighted with the results, and I’m eager to experiment with dyes in the future. I’m especially interested in plant-based dyes.

And for the final garnish on my new life as a Lady of Leisure, I visited a new yarn store in my neighborhood – Knitty City! This cute place on West 79th just opened a couple of weeks ago, and I’d begun to hear rumors of its existence. Naturally, I had to investigate post haste. It’s simply laid out, well lighted, and inviting. They’re still bringing in stock, but they’re specializing in the new line of Lily Chin yarns (which I hope Knitter’s Review will take a look at soon), and they have a good quantity of staples like Aurora 8, Cascade 220, and Plymouth basics, as well as a strong selection of Bouton d’Or yarns I haven’t seen elsewhere, and attractively priced lines of Frog Tree alpaca and Classic Elite Bazik wool. In fact, prices across the board are very competitive for New York. And they have a tempting array of Cherry Tree Hill sock yarn… yum. I snatched up some Bouton d’Or Aida in two lively turquoise hues. I’d never seen this yarn before, and I’m happy to report it’s delightful – two plies of different intense colors, very springy, and I-can’t-believe-it’s-100%-wool soft. I knit up a quick pair of Last-Minute Knitted Gifts wrist warmers for a friend’s birthday, and I went back for more of this yarn right away. Hooray for another LYS!

When I promised pictures of my father’s sweater this weekend, little did I know I’d be taking them in two and a half inches of new snow. I’ve given up trying to photograph this yarn indoors, and this was all the natural light that was on offer today. But you can see I’ve completed the back. And I’m happy to report I’m more than halfway up the tree motif on the front now, too. Here’s a closer shot that better shows the design:

The goal is to finish the body and start on the sleeves before the week is out. Of course, that means I have to dream up and chart the sleeve pattern.

So, a quiet day of knitting and watching Horatio Hornblower. I hope it snows again tomorrow. The weather people can grouse about “nuisance snow” as much as they please, but new-fallen snow will always hold a sense of magic for me. It gives me a shiver of delight when I wake up to see the landscape…um, cityscape…transformed.

There was certainly no sign of snow last night when I stumbled in late after the Spiders holiday extravaganza, lavishly hosted by Amanda and Katie. Those girls know how to lay out a spread, let me tell you. They made filo samosas, sweet potato puffs, baked brie with mushrooms, spanikopita, umpteen dips, and let’s not gloss over the truffles and the fudge, nor the signature Spiders cocktail. I foolishly failed to photograph any of ones I drank, but here’s a screwdriver with a spidey twist:

And the gifts we exchanged:

The Spider version of a gift exchange is pretty polite compared to some I’ve attended. I was only robbed twice. Lisa took some yummy Christmas-colored Manos, and Veronique boosted my seafoam Lobster Pot. But I went home happy with a nice score of Australian handpainted laceweight in purples, blues, and teals, and some snazzy stitch markers from Zephyr Knit. (Amanda, you’ll have to tell me the website again – I googled it and couldn’t find it!) A merry time was had by all, including the significant others, who found plenty of common ground in discussing our depravities and founding the Fraternal Order of International Non-Knitters (FOINK), or to be more PC since not all the members are gentlemen, OINK.

20 days and counting. Happy Frenzied Holiday Knitting, everyone!

And a pomegranate-blueberry martini looks mighty nice with a ball of Socks That Rock in “Jewel of the Nile”, we all agreed. Here’s a peek at a few of the attending Spidies:

Veronique showed off her beautiful Mystery Shawl. We were duly impressed…

…some of us so much so that we pounced on her Merino Oro leftovers during the subsequent yarn swap:

There’s a fir cone lace shawl in Wrap Style that’ll be perfect for this lovely stuff. And can you identify the background in the photo above? Yes, it’s one fifth of Cozy – one ball of interesting nubbly School Products cashmere down, four to go!

Apologies, again, for the delay in the posts. I’m pestering the host guys about it. I have learned the following: my server is named Grizabella. I find this rather adorable. Let’s all send Grizabella some chicken soup and alpaca yarn (knitters’ penicillin?), since she’s obviously a little under the weather. While I wait for her to recover, I’ve reduced the number of posts on the front page to six in the hopes that it will help the site load faster. Check the archives in the sidebar for older content.

puppies

sheep dog trials (yes, that’s a Border Collie, a handler, and three sheep in the distance)

featuring Joy and Amanda

and plenty of yarn.

Let’s take a closer look at the haul:

This glut includes three 500 yard skeins of Brooks Farms “Duet”, which is single ply of the world’s silkiest mohair and one of wool twizzled around each other, and three skeins of Blue Moon Socks That Rock. This picture also shows off my snazzy new leopard-print galoshes, which weren’t needed at all because the weather turned out to be gorgeous. But they made me easier to spot in the crowd and drew several compliments – one gentleman told me I ought to be in Vogue magazine. I hope he meant Vogue Knitting. Not pictured here is a luscious skein of Maple Creek DK weight silk/merino that came home with me, and seven skeins of Morehouse Merino 2-ply in “Sienna”, a pumpkin orange, for a husband sweater. O bountiful day. O meager bank account. It’s a good thing Rhinebeck is only once a year. Send a yarn swift!

Anyway, Apricot Jacket and I are bundling our high spirits into Joy’s car an hour from now and merrily driving upstate. There was frantic Lightning seaming last night, as I’d hoped to debut her there. But ultimately I didn’t want to rush the collar, and 65 degree weather isn’t really conducive to bulky-weight alpaca blends. So Apricot Jacket, which layers better, is getting the nod. See some of you there!

This picture really doesn’t capture even one tenth of the destruction that met my eyes when I finally did stumble out of bed. It seems that ultimately I have the spirit of a craftswoman and not that of a journalist. The first frenzied thought through my brain was “Repair! Repair!” and not “Document!” So I crawled around under the furniture rewinding my ball and picking cat hair out of the malabrigo and swearing before I realized I ought to take a picture. Actually, I may have the spirit of a vigilante – my very first thought was to find the son-of-a-mangey-monkey who dun this and give him an earful. And since I didn’t exactly have to send out a dragnet to round up suspects, that’s exactly what I did. (How did I come to leave my Clapotis lying about in such slatternly fashion that the ball of working yarn was available for this rumpus? Well, I left it on top of the laundry hamper where the cat never goes…and the darling hubby, being so darling and all, was trying not to wake me up when he left for his triathlon at 5 a.m. and may possibly have pulled his shorts out from under it a little indiscriminately, and since the darling hadn’t turned the light on he didn’t see that he’d released my precious ball of yarn down into Cat Territory…) Anyway, everyone is forgiven. We have nursery rhymes hundreds of years old that tell us what happens when you mix cats and yarn. This cautionary information is of such importance that generations of future knitters have learned it before they’re old enough to talk. Although my pet theory is that Mingus was reading over my shoulder the other day when I wrote to Lee Ann that he was good about leaving yarn alone, and he thought his bad-azz reputation might be slipping…

The omens didn’t get any better when I went to the flea market (Sundays the farmers bring their fresh produce, so I scored some tasty fruits and vegetables for the week) and the woman who sells the #5 green aluminum knitting needles wasn’t there. Her booth was just empty…I can only hope she was just on vacation and she’ll reappear next week!

But despite the signs, the cruise itself was delightful. I’m not sure how many people were there – seventy-five perhaps? It was a big bunch of happy floating knitters, and the breeze was cool enough on the river that we actually needed the knitwear we wanted to show off. I wore Lara, and she received many compliments. Goddess Amy of knitty.com fame took a picture of her and everything! And I worked on my mother’s feather-and-fan sock, which is nearly ready for a heel flap. You’ll have to visit other New York bloggers for good cruise pictures, as my little PowerShot S110 is proving itself to be sadly outdated, particularly in conditions with backlight. But here’s proof that the sock saw the statue of Liberty:

And no, the sock isn’t black. It’s Mountain Colors Bearfoot in colorway “meadow”, which is a rich mix of greens, blues and purples that my mom picked out herself. I’ll try to get a picture of it tomorrow when the light is good, since I also need to photograph my fab gift bag haul. Here are some happy Spiders (even poor Lisa, who was kind of seasick, is feeling better here as we pull back up to the pier) anticipating the gift bags:

A big thank-you to Amy, Helane, John, Sandy, and the rest of the teams at The Point and knitty.com for this terrific afternoon!

I finally got around to finishing Sock #2’s neglected toe, so I’ve officially completed my very first pair of socks. In anticipation of wearing them this fall, I bought these on sale in North Carolina:

Yum, Dansko clogs. I’ve wanted some for a long time, and the need to show off the socks I’m making finally pushed me over the edge. I’m glad I caved in: they’re very, very comfortable. Of course, it’s not exactly closed-toe-footwear weather in New York City yet, and it’s certainly not wool sock weather. In fact, it was rather a struggle to wrestle the socks onto my swollen feet (they’re only swollen from the heat – just because everyone else in Knitblogland seems to be getting knocked up doesn’t mean I have to jump on that wagon just yet!). But I’m glad these little puppies are all done.

Notes on the Crusoe Socks (pattern from Knitty): I used Knit Picks Sock Memories merino in colorway “Hawaii”, thoughtfully gifted by Mia for my honeymoon, and US size 2 Brittany Birch dpn’s. I knit the smaller size, which was a mistake. The extra four stitches would have made them a lot easier to get over my heel. These socks are SNUG. But they’re comfortable once I’ve spent a minute tugging them into place. I love the short legs – no need to worry about the sock saggage. On both socks I came out with funny math at the toe: I was supposed to wind up with ten stitches to kitchener, but I had twelve, as given for the larger size. And I had to do some rearranging to get an even number of stitches on my two needles. But these are very minor quibbles, and quite probably my own fault. In all, I loved knitting this pattern and will probably make these socks again.

In other knitting news, there was a Spiders & Friends yarn swap at Kaitlyn’s house this weekend, and a good time was had by all. No squabbling or cat fights over a whole sweater’s worth of Debbie Bliss cotton alpaca whatsoever, and lots of good yarn found a new home. I’ll be showing off my scores when I cast on for new projects. I’ll just leave you with this parting shot, as a cautionary lesson: don’t give knitbloggers too much rum punch. It lowers their inhibitions. And then they make their friends do ridiculous things so they can post pictures on the web. “Roll in the stash, Katie! Just roll in it!”