I take it back...

...well, some of it (it being one of my past Sock Wars rants). There is some point to some of the freakouts people had over gauge. The point is, not everybody is using Tofutsies. Not everybody is using sock yarn that's the same size as Tofutsies.

I know this because I'm in the process of finishing a pair knit from Brown Sheep's Wildefoote. I was nearly done with the first one when the little lightbulb went on. I checked the label and this yarn supposed to be 7 stitches per inch. Tofutsies is 8 stitches per inch. It looks like I'm between 7.5 and 8 stitches per inch on these socks on US 0. I could frog them and try again on smaller needles, but where around here could I find a set of 00? Yeah, double zero. I'm going to go with these as they are and hope my current target finds them reasonable. They really do look closer to the correct size than the first pair I did (sorry, Peggy!).

This will be my third kill in the war. I'd like to get to at least five, since I did four last time. Also, somebody in one of the forums said that getting to five makes you an Ace. Ace of Sox, that's the ticket.

Happy Blogoversary to Moi

My name is Paula, and I'm a widget junkie. ::Hi Paula!::
I started this blog a year ago. Part of my motivation was to have a place to go on and on about yarn as much as I wanted to. My other motivation was so I could have a place to put widgets. My Livejournal account will let you post many of them once, but there's no sidebar for long-term storage.

In honor of the occasion, I've added Knitmeter. At the time this is being written, it says I haven't knit much lately. This is a lie. I haven't added any yardage yet.

I stopped by the site of someone who shares this blogoversary and found out something very disturbing. DMC, the French manufacturer of embroidery threads, has declared bankruptcy. If you've ever done cross-stitch, you've undoubtedly familiar with them. If you're cross-stitching a pattern, that pattern will very likely list the colors of threads by their DMC color. This doesn't translate very easily to the knit/crochet world, as specific colors are not needed as they are in cross-stitch. It's kind of like there was one kind of yarn, available everywhere, that the majority of pattern designers used. Poof, one day the yarn's gone.

Monkey mood

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Originally uploaded by Paula knits

I'm taking a break from knitting socks for a while. I'll come back to it when it sounds fun. I finished the new Slow Bee clue yesterday and am glad there will be nothing to do on it for at least a week. I like the challenge, but trying to keep up with all those yarnovers can make me crazier.

Munkeh has been sitting in the back of my studio/computer room since I finished him about six months ago. I knit his tshirt but hated how it came out. I just yanked it off and tossed it. I plan to reknit it. There's got to be something appropriate and fun in my stash somewhere.

Before I do that, though, I may make him some little friends. I got the book Amigurumi World by Ana Paula Rimoli. The thought of making something little and cute and impractical sounds fun. The thought of making something that has only one live stitch at a time sounds wonderful. Monkeys! Kitties!! Hedgehogs!!! Happy smiling little cupcakes. :) This is a good idea.

Week End Update

Slow Bee Mystery The reknit clues 1 and 2 are done. We get a choice of two designs starting with clue 3. I picked the one that's more lacy and less solid. It has zig-zag-ish diamond designs. I'll spend Sci-Fi Friday with this.

Bavarian Twisted Stitch socks The reknitting I did on the shawl has made me more inclined to frog and reknit. The last row I finished on these did not have the correct number of stitches, so guess what I'll be doing? I started these to fill in the time between when Sock Wars started and I got another Slow Bee clue. I'll jump back on this once this week's Slow Bee clue is done.

Sock Wars III The short version is no new information. Here's the long version: ;)
-hundreds of knitters. 400+ of 1150+ are dead after two weeks of war.
-PG, whose entry on the Assassin's list does not show dead or alive
-mm, who is dying
-PK, who has made one or two kills
-PL, may have made one kill or may be a mystery
-PS, who has made two kills and has access to cheap, fast shipping
-RM, may have made one or two kill or may be a mystery
-HD, my great-grand assassin, has killed her target but target hasn't played dead yet
-CA, dead but yet to enter that status
-PS, my assassin. Total mystery.
-Peety, yours truly. Two kills and waiting for work in progress.
-KC, my most recent target. Dead as soon as she opens her mail.
-MS, soon to be my target. Waiting patiently for ammo for her.
-the next four people below my new target are still alive.
-more of the hundreds of knitters

I will probably get partly completed socks on Tuesday or Wednesday. I know nothing for sure. I could be assassinated before then. KC could've taken the socks with her on her trip, finished them, and assassinated MS. It should be called Speculation Wars, because you spend far more time guessing what'll happen next than you do knitting.

Slow Bee Me

I had a crabbiness attack and completely frogged my Slow Bee Mystery shawl. I was almost done with the second clue and decided I wasn't happy with what I was doing. The re-do of the first clue is nearly complete. The piece does look better, so it has been worth the bother.

What I have learned is that I can lose yarnovers very, very easily.

On another note: a tornado came through near here last night. No stash damage has occurred, so all is well.

Vocabulary Lesson

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Originally uploaded by Paula knits

Between Ravelry and a dedicated server for Sock Wars III, there have been a whole lot of postings from warriors. This has resulted in some new terms.

grandtarget, great-grandtarget, grandassassin, great-grandassassin: Your grandtarget is your target's target. Your grandassassin is your assassin's assassin. Ann, my great grandtarget, sent me these pretty socks today. I'll finish them and send them on to Karon, my great-great grandtarget.

armored division: A reference to a turtle's shell. Turtle is a reference to the speed, or lack thereof, with which some people are knitting. My assassin has not posted anything or killed me and the pattern's been available for a week. Could she be part of the armored division?

Not so cranky today

I'm a little less of a beeyotch today. Sock Wars stuff has improved. People are playing so nicely that it makes me feel a little better about it.

• My current target is Ann. Her LYS is a shop I have fond memories of from the last time I was in the Seattle area. Ann's about to be killed but still willing to let me know what is going on with the socks she is working on.
• Ann's working on socks for Karon. I emailed Karon and told her how Ann didn't have her address and would she send it to us. Karon's the poster child for playing fair, in that she did send the address.
• Karon lives close enough to me that I could deliver the socks in person. Which I would never do! It kind of makes up for the first War, where I was probably the second person out (I had to mail to Israel from the U.S.).
• I emailed the Supreme Commander from a different email address than the one I'm using for the War. She sent my dossier (yup, third time's the charm). She also successfully sent the dossier that Ann needed.

Best wishes for nice socks to Ann and Karon. Now what the heck is my assassin up to?

Slow Bee clue 1

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Originally uploaded by Paula knits

I'm a little bit burnt out on sock knitting. I think I did the Sock Wars socks correctly, but doubt very much if they'll fit their recipient very well. I won't feel bad if I get killed soon and don't have to knit any more of them.

I like the Slow Bee Mystery shawl. We get one clue a week for about a million weeks or something. I don't know how many weeks. This is the first one. It'll use up a couple of miles of yarn and a few thousand beads. I've revised my opinion of Addi Turbo circular needles. Until I started this, I couldn't see what all the fuss was about. Now I can appreciate them. I'm even investing in the lace version with a longer cable. I've just started this shawl and had to put half of the stitches on a spare needle to take a picture. I imagine that at the widest part, I'll need much more space for stitches.

Moving on to fun stuff

Here's proof that the fraking Detonator socks are in the mail.

Now I can move on to some big fun with my Slow Bee Mystery shawl, clue 1. I've already learned that marking it off into sections gives me a better chance of getting it right.

I'm also working on a swap on Ravelry. The LYS that should've had the things I was looking for didn't have them. I can find them online, but I feel guilty when I don't support local shops. Hmmm, not too much time left so I better put the knitting down and go look.

Half of Peggy's Doom

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Originally uploaded by Paula knits

Half of the other half is done.

P.S. I know the camera puts on 10 pounds, but it doesn't look anywhere near this big In Real Life. I used Tofutsies. I got gauge on size 0 needles. This sock still doesn't look quite right to me. Sorry.

P.P.S. I still don't have a dossier. I found my target in the database and got her address from her profile.

Sock Wars: final rant

Back in January, I posted some thoughts about what I thought might change about Sock Wars this time. One of the thought was that communication and organization would have to improve. I never thought it would get worse, but it has.

We all should've had our dossiers about 21 hours ago. This is the information that tells you what size socks to knit and where the socks are to be shipped when complete. I am one of dozens of players who do not have this information. If I had this information, my socks could've been shipped out when the post office was open this morning. Instead, I have two partially knit socks and an attitude problem.

My attitude would be much improved if only somebody could have posted something, anything, about this situation. I would've been satisfied with "We're aware of the problem but don't have a solution yet".

If I get a target, I'll finish the socks and send them on. I won't knock myself out getting them done and in the mail.

If I don't get a target, I really don't much care any more. If Sock Wars occurs again, I won't be playing.

The Merry Schaefchen Pommel is finished!*

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Originally uploaded by Paula knits

I saw this pattern while poking around on Ravelry. I decided that I must drop everything and knit it immediately. The problem is, the pattern's in German. I can read some German, but not enough to decipher a knitting pattern. I got translations via Babelfish and Yahoo both. Between the two of them and pictures of completed sheep on Ravelry, I got fairly close.

The original calls for a funny little tuft of hair. I made the cutest little knit cap with an eensy little pompom instead. My sheep is busy knitting a matching scarf. I plan to re-do the knitting needles when I've got better toothpicks.

*The title of this post came from the Babelfish translation.

Swatch

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Originally uploaded by Paula knits

This is the swatch for the Slow Bee KAL. It took several tries before I got it done, but it worked out in the end. The picture was something else: I tried it several tries and this is the best I could do. Some days I just cannot make that camera do what I want it to do. At least the beads all show

I ordered more yarn when I realized I'd miscalculated the amount I needed. Knit Picks really came through. It showed up in 5 days and was the same dye lot. That's some luck. I can't begin to guess how big this thing is going to be. I just did the math and I've got almost two miles of yarn.

I always have to drop a needle size to get gauge, but not with this pattern and yarn. This is also lucky because I should be able to use my one set of Addi Turbos for this project.

Berlin completed

skp2done
Originally uploaded by Paula knits

These are my SKP socks all done. Despite the fuzzy (size limitations in group postings) pic, you can clearly see which one had a few blasts of steam and which just came off of my needles.

I wish the pattern had been proofread. There was some confusion due to the pattern being translated from German to English. There's one stitch that I'm not 100% sure I did right, which is distressing.

My goal was to be better than last time (27th). This time I was 9th. There's one knitter in the group who is unbelievably fast and/or does not sleep. I was impressed to see her pair posted around the time I was starting my second sock. I'm kind of fast, but nothing like her. Since there were people just finishing their first pair of socks, I don't feel all that slow.

SKP Sock Pattern #2

I'm taking a little break from Sock Knitter's Pentathalon, second pair. The first sock is done. I'm half a pattern repeat into the second one. I'm estimating about another 8 hours until I complete it. This is what the beginning of the first sock looked like

My goal is to finish faster than I did on the first challenge. I think I was about 27th. I'll be back with a picture when I'm all done.