Hogwarts Sock Swap III

A questionnaire wasn't posted for this swap, so I pulled up the one for Swap II, just in case my partner needs some information.

• What Hogwarts house have you been sorted into? Volunteered for Slytherin
  
• List your favorite double-point needle brands, including size and length. Or would you prefer circulars? I have Clover bamboo dpns in sizes 1 through 4, all at least 6" long. I like them. I have a bunch of circulars, but tend to do socks on dpns.
  
• Would you like to try a new brand needle? If so, which brand? Size? Length? Sure, I'm willing to try something new, except very short needles don't work well for me. I need sizes less than 1 (0, 00, 000). My fantasy needles are these. Please note that I do NOT in any way expect any fantasies to be fulfilled!
  
• Do you have any allergies? No, but I don't like scented things very much, they make me sneeze.
  

I have the bag pattern I want to make for my partner and I'm itching to get started on it. She's in Gryffindor, whose colors are scarlet and gold. There goes my plans to dye the sock yarn. I've yet to find a scarlet dye that will work for me.

Socktopia Mystery Sock, through step 3

I steamed this a little bit so that the cable could be seen. You can see it in person, it's down the center of the picture. I reused the recently frogged yarn I call desert snake. I know it doesn't look like a desert snake. It is called that because it was partly dyed with leftovers from a Slytherin sock yarn swap. The pink is called desert rose. Did I post that already? Okay, I'll shut up and go check the dryer.

My Left Sock

I was reading the Rockin Sock Club blog. People seem to either love the yarn and don't care for the pattern or vice-versa on the new club shipment. I'm firmly in the second category. I don't care for brown and magenta and bright blue together are kind of icky. I do like the pattern though.

I was listening to Lime & Violet tonight and got to the end of the sock right as the podcast was ending. I foolishly attempted to start my Kitchener stitch and listen to the song simultaneously. Even if the song wasn't a hilarious takeoff on "99 Luftballons", I somehow forgot that I'm still learning to do Kitchener correctly. I have to look it up every time and sit chanting In-Off-Out-switch needles while I do it. It works perfectly except for that last darn stitch. I'm still faking that last one, but it's a vast improvement over what I did previously.

Waltz with Sir Frogsalot

The two-at-a-time toe-up socks did not work. The leg portion is too small. I was about to start the heels and tried to try one on. Not going to fit. My problem with the pattern is that it was general directions: do this for a couple of rows, do that for some more rows, and then try it on. Ick. If I wanted to write a pattern, I'd write one.

One good thing about it is I was able to see how the yarn I'd dyed knit up. I used a technique I learned last year at SAFF. The point is to make yarn that doesn't form a pattern. It works better if you've got three people involved in applying the dye to the yarn. I did it by myself and it worked out well. No striping to speak of and very little pooling.

The other good thing is that I can frog it, put it aside, and start in on my Flower Power STR yarn!

Whine, no cheese

But I wanna play on Ravelry NOW!

• You signed up on July 3, 2007
  
• You are #12914 on the list.
  
• 2999 people are ahead of you in line.
  
• 15117 people are behind you in line.
  
• 35% of the list has been invited so far
  

Woo Hoo!

I got a ticket for Yarn Harlot's appearance in Atlanta on September 19. Tickets are free but you've got to have one to get in. Contact Knitch to get one.

Flower Power has arrived! It's the newest Rockin Sock Club yarn. I won't spoil beyond the name. It's my favorite kind of STR yarn and I like the colors. I think I'll like the pattern too. I think I'll save it to work on at the knit-in that's connected with the event above. Knit-in, love-in, it's all good.

Now if I could only get Donovan's "Wear Your Love Like Heaven" out of my head, I'd be a happy girl.

Sock yarn swap

This is the b&b yarn that I dyed for the dyed sock yarn swap. I hope my parner likes it.

I think my new project will be doing two-at-a-time socks. This is for purely practical reasons. The new STR club yarn from Blue Moon should be here within the next week. Odds are I'll want to jump right on it. If I do the two-at-a-time socks, it will be using needles that I won't need for the STR socks. Oh, such a clever girl.

Hufflepuff socks and pink tomatoes

These are the socks I made with the yellow part of the Hufflepuff yarn. I've decided that I have to do some more work on foot fit going forward. The leg part fits fine but the feet are big.

I dyed the yarn for my Swap-bot person. She likes red so I thought that a dye called Ripe Tomato would do the trick. ::bzzzzzzt:: wrong! I had the good sense to test little bits of the yarn first. Ripe Tomato got me a really nice shade of pink. Unfortunately, my person does not like pink. I think she may have tried to dye yarn red herself to know to mention this. Heh heh heh. At least I'll know to use Ripe Tomato next time I want a nice shade of pink. I'd never thought to try it otherwise. I ended up doing a color for my person I call B&B (buttercup and blueberry). Watch this space for a picture to be posted when it is dry. I hope she likes it. I know she'll like it more than pink.

I got a couple of balls of aMaizeing yarn, this stuff that's made out of corn. I thought I'd try making socks out of it. ::bzzzzzzt:: wrong! It's DK weight which is a bit on the thick side for the sort of socks I like. I found a pattern on the web that worked pretty well, except I ran out of yarn 3/4 of the way down the foot. After a quick hop into the frog pond, now I've got to find something else to do.

The dangers of link-clicking

First of all, I will be putting all possible energies into the job hunt starting Monday. Tomorrow's Monday.

Earlier today/tonight/whatever it is, I went to Swap-bot to get my partners' names for a knit pattern swap. I checked each profile to see what they might be into, knit-wise. One of them has a blog.

I went to the blog. It mentioned something called Yarn Wars. I was immediately curious, having participated in a Yarn War several months ago. This isn't the same thing. It's something started by Lime & Violet. Since I recently got DSL, I wanted to check out their podcasts. That was two reasons to go.

I went to Lime & Violet. I read the details on KnitWars. I clicked the link to sign up.

That brought me to Chore Wars. It is a site that turns doing housework into an adventure game. Since I nearly always turn housework into a game, albeit a boring one, I read on. Modifications have been made for this group, turning it into Adventures in the Land of Lime and Violet YARN RAIDERS. I signed up. I already have 1 experience point for reading the directions. While reading the directions, there were several mentions of Ravelry. I had to know know more.

I went to Ravelry. They're in beta and have a whole queue of people waiting for an invitation to play. It looked vaguely familiar. Since they had someplace where you could find out where you are on the list, I checked it out. Yup, I signed up for it about six weeks ago. D'oh! There are about 3500 people ahead of me on the list, so I don't expect to be distracted by it any time soon. (There are more than 13,000 behind me, so for some reason I don't feel bad about this).

Tomorrow later today (it's Sunday here) I'll dye the yarn for the dyed yarn Swapbot swap. I'll get Yarn Raider points for doing that. When it is dry, I'll get points for winding it up. Which I won't do until I've checked all my job hunting sites. Honest.

Knit one, swap two

I really should be spending my time at Monster, but instead I've been over on Swap-bot. When those sets of swaps are done, I'll have several more sock patterns and several more skeins of yarn. They should all fit nicely in a grocery cart along with my cats if I don't get off my lazy behind and get a job.

I also signed up for the third Hogwort's sock swap. I switched houses yet again, and am Slytherin this time. The colors are green and silver. I was looking around on the web for Harry Potter-related patterns and found the coolest bag patterns. It's basically the same for each house with a central motif that's specific to that house. I can't wait to get my partner assigned so I can find out what colors to get and start working on it.

I'll be dyeing yarn again. One of the Swap-bot swaps is for trading home-dyed yarn plus I'll probably dye whatever I do for Hogwort III. I could end up with someone who wants a scarf or mittens kit, though, instead of socks.

I took some time off knitting to cross-stitch. I made these for a swap. I also worked on a kit that I bought in Paris a couple of years ago. I had to switch when I got frustrated with the socks I was working on. I've frogged and reknit and will post them when they're done. It won't be long now.

STR Yarn

I decided I better use my discount coupon with Blue Moon before all my money disappeared. I bought lightweight Socks That Rock (superwash merino) in Grandma's Flower Garden:

I expected it to be more on the pastel side, but I like this just fine.

The other is a new colorway called Christmas Balls:

I love how it has sections of solid color and others that are stripey. This is going to be so much fun to knit.

World's Largest Sock visits Alpharetta

The (potentially) World's Largest Sock was at Only Ewe and Cotton Too this afternoon and a bunch of people worked on it. About two feet of the 12+ feet needed to get to the start of the heel turn have been completed so far. It's top-down. As one of the knitters said, can you imagine the logistics involved in doing all of those short rows for a toe up?

I have no idea how many stitches are on the needles. The stitches are on a bunch of circular needles. When you knit, you have one end of a needle from the person on either side of you. It's a challenge, since everyone knits at a different speed, everyone has a different experience level, and there are "picker" and "thrower" style knitters next to each other. That's all part of the fun. I was sitting next to a man who wanted to be part of the project, so someone was teaching him how to knit--on the sock!

The Sock will be at The Whole Nine Yarns in Woodstock on Tuesday night. It'll be at some other places in the Atlanta area, but I didn't catch them all. Needle Nook was mentioned, as was a shop in Buckhead whose name I can't recall. The Atlanta Knitter's Guild is behind the Sock's appearance in the area. Contacting them might let you know if it will appear near you.

It will be at an event in Rochester, New York after Atlanta.

World's Largest Sock!

This info just arrived in my email:

The World's Largest Sock will be available for you to knit at Only Ewe and Cotton Too on Sunday, August 12 from 2:00pm - 5:00pm.

This sock was started in Great Britain and has made it's way to the U.S. It is now in possession of the Atlanta Knitting Guild - AND YOU - will be able to participate in helping this sock make it into the record books (Guiness) as the world's largest sock!

Eleven people at one time can knit on this sock - COME SEE AND KNIT ! What fun to be able to say that you were part of this event.

Can't Wait to see you on Sunday!

Elyse
Only Ewe and Cotton Too
770-740-0844

I'll be there. Only Ewe is in the Crabapple area in Alpharetta (north of Atlanta).

Solstice Slip

I used a needle size larger than what was called for, which may not have been necessary. I also ended them one row before what was called for to make sure there was plenty of room at the top. That worked great. Binding off in pattern gave them a cute ruffly top.

The new project is the Bumblebug socks using the yarn I got in the most recent Hogwort's swap. The Hufflepuff yarn I got was a big hank of yellow and a smaller one of black. I would like to make them out of the yellow alone. It looks like there will be enough yellow to do this. I know it's not completely in the spirit of the swap to use just one of the house colors, but they are my socks and I'll do what I like. So there. I got through the heel and discovered a mistake in the first pattern repeat, so I frogged and started again. I tried the sock on pre-frog and it fit pretty well. The second time I did the top ribbing in needles two sizes up from the rest of the sock, so that should correct the only fit issue.

I'll be going to the previous Hogwart swap for the next pair. I'll use the Ravenclaw yarn and the pattern for doing two socks at once. I've not tried this before, so it'll be fun to learn something new.

Here are the latest things that I want and can't justify buying right now. Mmmm, pretty needles (drool).

My brother's in Chile on vacation. Before he left, I asked if he saw any yarn in his travels that his sister likes yarn. Any kind. Any color. I also reminded him how I brought his favorite beer back from France last time I was there. He said he'd get me some alpaca. Mmmm, alpaca (drool). It would be cool to get any sort of yarn from a place I've never been.