Waterlily Socks

I picked a pattern out of the dozens of pdfs in my downloads directory. I didn't remember where or why I'd acquired it. I posted the completed socks on Ravelry and then somebody asked me how to get the pattern. I dug out the pattern, which only had the designer's name. I Googled it. No luck. I Googled the pattern name. I found one other person who'd done the socks and several unrelated patterns with the same name. I tried several other things, eventually heading to Ravelry. I found it. The name on the pattern in the file is the designer's real name. The name on the pattern in Ravelry is the designer's Ravelry name. The only connection I could find was the picture of the sock.

There were at least two of us hunting for this information today. If by chance someone else goes through this:
Waterlily Socks
blog
The pattern appears to only be available via Ravelry. Do a search on verybusymonkey.

Swap addict

tinswap
Originally uploaded by Paula knits

Yes, I am a swap addict. It's so much fun to put together goodies that you hope someone will like. Then there's the fun of finding a package in your mailbox that's full of goodies someone has sent to you. This came from Laurie in Pennsylvania. I like it very much.

Until I am employed again, though, I'm not signing up for any more swaps. I was able to do the last couple because of some holiday money that unexpectedly arrived. I've got one more that I'm already committed to doing, but I've already spent most of the budget for it.

Well, maybe just one more. The group that did this swap is considering one with a modest budget. That wouldn't be too bad, would it?

Knit one, organize two

I have been knitting, but only this sock in about the past week. I like to watch tv when I knit, and the picture tube in mine gave out. I was able to buy a new flat screen with a slightly smaller screen size than the old one. This means it takes up MUCH less space. Welcome to the 21st century: this thing weighs about 10% of what that picture tube did! Instead of knitting, I was moving electronics around and labeling wires and re-routing wires so they don't show, and dusting in places that hadn't been accessible in a long time.

Then I got started on tidying up the area where I do most of my knitting. I have this coffee table with drawers with all sorts of things flung in them. I emptied them out and put liner paper in them. I glued some pretty paper on a bunch of Altoid tins, filled the tins with stuff, and made labels for the tins. I can actually find stuff now. The knitting book mountain was relocated next to the tv, since there's all this extra space.

I've got to find and/or make a pillow, reorganize more stuff in the tv area, and find something to cover up the area that's exposed behind the teevee. I should be ready for the Intention Yarns Spiritstitching Circle. Well, as ready as I'll ever be. :)

Magic yarn ball magically appears

Today I found a cardboard box in the weeds in the general vicinity of my mailbox. It was the magic yarn ball swap that Jackie sent from Denmark 29 days ago. Kids, it doesn't take a package 29 days to get here from Denmark. It's that darn Post Awful's fault. Where the box has been and why it wasn't put on my doorstep the way they do all my other packages is anyone's guess.

I opened the box and found two European knitting pattern magazines, which were cool because you cannot get them here. There were some groovy bookmarks. And there was a big lumpy ball of yarn. You can see it in the upper right corner of the upper right picture. For those unfamiliar with the concept, a magic yarn ball consists of a ball of yarn with goodies wound up inside of it. One must unwind and rewind the yarn to get the goodies out. It is big fun. As you can see by the picture on the lower left, I had "help" doing this.

In the end, I had a bag of chocolate covered caramels, two milk chocolate bars, and two turtles. The turtles were found stuffed inside the two skeins of yarn in the center of the ball. There was an "explosive device": a retractible tape measure that looks a little like a bomb once the yarn flames are attached to the pull tab. The yarn appears to be native to Denmark and there's enough for two pair of socks. How cool is that?

Many thanks go to Jackie for this fun swap.

Recalculation?

My goal for the L&V marathon was to knit up half of my sock yarn stash.

Tracking what I knit is not going to reflect the stash reduction correctly. For example, the socks I just finished used about 300 yards of yarn. However, the whole skein is 440 yards. Leftovers aren't meant to count unless an entire pair of socks can be made from them.

I guess I'll continue to enter my actual yardage in the KnitMeter and keep track of used up yarn separately. I have such an exciting existence, this is what occupies my brain, LOL.

Fat free indulgence

This yarn came from Woolen Mill St. Yarns. It is inspired by the Fruity Oaty Bar commercial in the movie Serenity. I had to have it.

::exits, waving geek flag and singing the Fruity Oaty Bar song::

A very good mail day

I have not been happy with the mail lately. Magazines show up late or not at all. A package that's coming from overseas is MIA. When packages do show up, they are piled on my doorstep so they must be knocked over before I can retrieve them.

Then there's today. There were three packages that had to be knocked over, but nothing in them was breakable. Package 1 had a beautiful skein of Intentions Yarn in the Healing colorway (greens and a bit of blue). Package 2 was from Amazon and had two books I'd been waiting to be able to order. This was Package 3:

This is a Ravelry swap. A group of Cookie A. fans did a Valentine's Day swap that included sending one of her patterns. Joe is the person who sent me all of these goodies. Kids, I would've been delighted with it even without the Barbara Walker book. I can't believe he sent that with all these things. Now if you'll excuse me, I want to go try the coffee. Oh, and put that tin of handmade caramels where I won't get into them for a while. Yum.

Mmmmy new favorite sock yarn

mmmsock
Originally uploaded by Paula knits

is Malabrigo.