She's at it again

Trick or Treat? It's another night for treats. Knitter's Brewing Company is one of those places where I often give in to temptation. I think the last time was a kit for watermelon socks. Tonight's a kit for Fangtastic Socks. The kit's got your choice of the main color, mini skeins for the contrasting colors, your choice of one of four themed stitch markers, and the pattern. The physical kit's backordered but should go out next week. There's a pdf version of the pattern. The link for that has already popped up in my email box. You can order a paper copy if you want one.

I didn't intend to buy more, but the bats were so tempting. I may do the pattern with just bats and skip the vampire heel. Happy Halloween!

Insomnia Girl goes Shopping

I should be really tired but I'm not. It's the middle of the night and I've been shopping. I promised myself I could acquire some yarn for a specific project as a birthday present for moi.

I've been working on Celestarium. It's a circular shawl with constellations worked in via beads and yarnovers. If you were at the North Pole and looked up, it is what you would see. It's fun and easy and the first thing I've made in a month that I haven't screwed up majorly. I decided I'd do the pattern's South Pole version, Southern Skies.

I poked around on Etsy and didn't find anything suitable for the project. I did happen upon a dyer that is new to me. The Yarns of Rhichard Devrieze come from Canada. If they are half as pretty as the pictures, I will be happy. I only got enough for one pair of socks, so it wasn't all that naughty.

I headed back to Ravelry for some inspiration. I found a scarf pattern that I want to knit. It uses multicolored laceweight with long color repeats. I was charmed by the yarn. It turns out that it's only available in Europe. Well, I might be able to order it from Germany, but my ability to communicate in German is pretty much gone. And then there's the shipping. Noro makes laceweight so that's what I decided to use. I suspect that the color repeats aren't as long as the original yarn, but it should work okay. I found the Noro at Paradise Fibers. I ended up getting the yarn for Southern Skies there, too. It's Kollage Sock-a-licious Sock Yarn in the Blue Heaven colorway. It's a semisolid almost turquoise blue. The beads are from Fire Mountain. If my monitor's showing colors correctly, it should be a good match.

Uh-oh. Back to the email box for those purchase confirmations and what also appears? A sale notice from Gail Wilson Designs. I've been a fan of Gail Wilson since the 1980s. She had all these cool kits for making tiny dolls and teddy bears and bunnies. She does gorgeous early American style dolls now. I ordered a kit to make two tiny (2.5") dolls and one for making a pumpkin man.

I think I'm done now. I ordered what I intended (and then some) and confessed my sins here. I'm still not sleepy, so it's time for a Godzilla DVD and some more Celestarium knitting.

Checking in

I'm in one of my weird sleep cycles. I'm 12 hours off of what a normal human sleeps plus occasional naps. It's kind of tricky if one needs to get things done.

I've not been getting the Scarefest socks done. Well, at least not correctly. The most recent one looks like a cauldron dripping green stuff. It's pretty cool and the leg worked out well. The foot was dreadful. I think the yarn was heavier than fingering weight. I chose to not finish the pair. I may do some more of the Super Sock Scarefest socks as they appear, but am not going to obsess over getting them done.

I went back to my 50th anniversary of Doctor Who project. The goal is to have completed 12 Who-related projects by November 23. I've got three more projects to do in six weeks. This is what I finished yesterday:

The pattern looks like a bunch of weeping angels. The funky colorblock look is courtesy of mini skeins in Rose Tyler, Amy Pond, and the 10th Doctor colorways.

I knit them with my new Dreamz dpns. I like them very much. Each of the six sizes has its own color. Also, each needle has the US and metric sizes printed on them. No fooling around with multiple needle sizers. Yay!

I got my physical copy of Op-Art Socks today. It's going to be fun and challenging to knit through this book. I was wondering how the wild pair on the cover. It takes two balls of the same long color repeat striping yarn. Looks like big fun to me.

Zombie Freebie

Want to knit something other than clothing or stuff for your home? Don't want any fluffy bunnies or pink unicorns? Try this freebie.

Off the yarn diet

I've been pretty good about not buying yarn. I even talked myself out of another yarn club (cool idea, but it was international and the postage made it unreasonably expensive). Discount codes and coupons started accumulating, so I decided to use some of them as birthday presents.

From left to right:

• Black Trillium Fibers superwash merino in the Saltwater colorway
• Candy Skein superwash merino/silk in the Foilwrapper colorway
• Candy Skein merino/nylon in the Candy Corn colorway
• Lorna's Laces merino/nylon in the Franklin's Panopticon colorway

I also ordered two sets of Doctor Who-themed mini skeins from Geek Chic Yarns.

I snapped two of my Knit Picks dpns in the past week. Between that and having to double check the sizes every time I used them, I'd had it with the set. I ordered a set of Knitter's Pride Dreamz dpns. Each size is a different color. I think that will make knitting happier.

I could use another present. I wonder if there's a US-based yarn club that I'd like to try?