Quick! Look over there!

See the pretty flower from the garden at Emily Dickinson's House in Amherst, Massachusetts!

Now look down there--careful it's a bee!

Yes, it's true. I'm just trying to distract you from the fact that I've broken my stash vow and am continuing on my March of Shame. We've already passed the first checkpoint at Green Mountain Spinnery. The second and most lethal part of the March continues at WEBS, where I first encountered the sock yarn display...

They had lots and lots of stuff, but I was in search of one thing (which became two purchases...). I passed up the Trekking and the Kaffe Fasset and the hand-dyed house brand and finally found a few remaining colors of Shibui Sock Yarn. Woo hoo!

Details of the yarn are over there to your right in my stash list. This is lovely, lovely, stuff. 100% superwash merino but with a little more inherent strength to it (or so it seems to me) that others like it! Of course, I broke my rule that says no 100% merino socks because holes emerge pretty quickly, but the saturated colors and the feel of the yarn made me go against my better judgement. I did buy some reinforcing yarn to do the toes and heels. Look what I got's going on here! These are socks for Poem-man in the Diagonal Rib pattern. (The color variation in the toes is from the reinforcing thread.)

The other color is for me. I wanted a change from all the multicolored hand-dyed yarns I've been using. These might become Poseidon socks or Whitbys or (insert suggestion here)?

Anyway, that's the yarn from the front of the Webs store stop. After walking around totally overwhelmed by all the yarns in the front, I went back into the really major sales in the warehouse. omigod. But that's for another day.

In the meantime, the wedding afghan is further along and, well--

How is this and this going to become that (which is a gift for my mother?)

Walk of shame!

I may have broken my stash vow. duh.

I had a wonderful time yarn gazing at Green Mountain Spinnery. GPS was really tiny and felt like some artisanal kind of place, and a really nice woman named Em helped me out while I was there. It was a great chance to handle and see all of their yarns that I had read about, and it seemed that if I didn't buy it straight from there, I would be cheating somehow. (On the other hand, I didn't know that they carry the yarn at Webs, which was my next stop and at a 20% discount. Eek. But, it's the difference between buying at an independent bookstore vs. some Amazon/Walmart kind of place, yes?) Here's my purchase from there: 7 skeins of "Sylvan Spirit" (50% wool/tencel) in Amethyst, intended for Cinxia.

After about 45 minutes at GPS, Poem-man and I had a lovely lunch in Putney at Front Porch Cafe, which Em had recommended. Both the cafe and GPS would be worth another visit!

Back in the car we got and made our way to Webs, a mere 1.5 hours or so from Putney. I should have known what I was in for when the car we parked next to contained two teenage boys totally reclined in the seats playing hand-held video games and the car parked behind us had a sleeping man at the wheel. Poem-man was like, "wait, let me make sure I have my Ipod and my book." I walked in to Webs with a plan. whatever. but that's a story for another day.

Traveling beyond...

It's been a packed 5 days! I bought a NEW CAR which I love and promptly drove 800 miles though Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont. As a native Midwsterner, I still marvel at being able to travel to a gabillion states in like half and hour or something. Most of the time was spent hanging out with some of Poem-man's family, so lots of knitting got done. A pair of Vinnland socks in 5 days!

Pattern: Vinnland Socks

Yarn: Yarn Love Juliet in "Fervor"

Yarn enabler: woolgirl, August 2007

Knit on: One 32" Knitpicks Size 0 Circular

Time I spent knitting these while listening to my MIL, SIL, and Poem-man carry on: 5 days.

I'm tellin' you this Vinnland sock pattern is genius and a must-knit! It's basically a 2x2 rib, but the ribs swirl and flow, and I memorized the 16-row pattern after one repeat. The ribbing makes them fit snugly and not droop. I'm still having trouble, however, with the looseness of my knitting. The yarn was pretty thin and even though I knit it on size O needles, if you look closely at the stitches they're pretty loose. The merino-tencel combo may be better for me than wool-nylon.

Vermont and Massachusetts were fraught with stash-peril for me. Geez. Here's a little taste of where I went before WEBS, and maybe tomorrow or the day after, I'll actually do the walk of shame.

Oy Welt!

Poem-man has new socks that he really likes! The colorway makes them perfect to wear with jeans, and the merino-tencel blend makes them cooler, lighter, and comfortable for warmer-than-winter weather. I'm not sure that the chevron welt was the right pattern for the colorway and color-stripey-repeat action, but Poem-man really likes them, so I'm happy, too. I want to make some merino-tencel socks for me because the drape and snugness of this blend is really nice.

Pattern: Chevron Welt from Sensational Knitted Socks.
Yarn: Yarn Love Joan of Arc (merino-tencel) in "Contentment;"
Yarn enabler: woolgirl, August 2007
Knit on: One 32" Knitpicks Size 0 Circular Needle
Time I spent knitting these when I should have been putting my conference presentation together: 10 days.


Wedding Afghan update! Woo hoo!
Time elapsed: 35 days
Number of days that S & C have been married: 12 days.
Repeats Completed: 6.5
Skeins knitted: 14 of 26.
Length: 30 inches
Hence: I am more than halfway home!

Lastly, I'm off this weekend on another little mini-vacation. While it's true that I will be visiting my mother-in-law, it's also true that I'll be headed to Vermont (a state full of yarn and cheese!) by way (either on the way there or the way back or both!) of WEBS in Northampton. And just look how many spaces I have to fill in my stash!

Muddling on...

Quandaries, quandaries, quandaries....

I'm not working right now (oh, I'm employed--just a teacher on summer break), so life is lacking structure, and I find that when life is lacking structure, I try to put structure to it in messed up ways, instead of ways that would actually provide the needed structure to my life.

For instance, instead of doing things like: preparing for the conference that I'm taking part in this weekend, organizing my stuff, knitting the wedding afghan, and seeing to my medical needs (which are not onerous--so no worries!), I'm trying to help someone fix his life and relationships (which is not my job), trolling for patterns to add to my dream list of knitting, shopping online for yarn and then quickly closing the cart windows, and knitting more socks in variegated colors all while listening to sappy music and sappier movies. A recipe for disaster, yes? At least I'm knitting!

Anyway! Here's some socks on the needles for Poem-man. Yes, it's modeled on my foot--just imagine them on a larger, wider, paler and hairier appendage. It's a chevron-welt pattern from Sensational Knitted Socks, and I've taken to calling them (in my August funk) Weltschmerz socks, which is too unfair and too weighty for these delightfully oceanic blue, merino-tencel beauties. The yarn is a little squeaky (I don't know how else to describe it) compared to 100%merino--think of comparing Wisconsin cheese curds to French Camembert. WHAT? It's yarn that's delicious and quirky in its own right, but not the most buttery of fibers to knit. Well, I know what I mean, anyway. Poem-man has tried them on and likes the lightness and smoothness of the fabric, so we're happy here. I'm on the increases for the heel gusset and hope to finish this weekend on my conference trip.

I'm not talking about the wedding afghan. Except to say that I'm on the 11th of 26 skeins, and I just noticed that I made a mistake in the cable chart back about 15 rows and I'm just going to have to figure out a fudgy way to get back on track because I refuse to frog an entire skein of knitting and you can't really tell in the grand scheme of all these cables anyway!

Wasn't feelin' it

I do feel the ewe-phoria of an FO. I do like the way the socks fit. The pattern is great: Good for variegated yarn. Good for me, Ms. Loose Knitter, since it had a stitch that one slips for four whole rows. The stitch pattern is also brilliant in that that slipped stitch keeps the fabric firm so that the socks don't have a chance to slouch--nicely snug to the leg and foot! I would highly recommend the pattern--and it's free!

The yarn is good to knit with and the dyeing is very well done. Despite all these positives, I just wasn't feeling it, so even though I have enough yarn left to probably knit a third sock, I stopped knitting these toe-up sock at crew socks. I think the colors, which I love separately, somehow weren't giving me the love I was hoping for. And you can't see it, but the colorway had too much brown--practically the same brown as my skin. And who wants to knit skin? eeuw.




Pattern: Ambrosia Socks
Yarn: Brooklyn Handspun Signature Yarn in "Festive;"
Yarn enabler: Brooklyn Handspun, June 2007
Knit on: One 32" Knitpicks Size 0 Circular Needle
Time I spent knitting these when I should have been knitting the wedding afghan: 11 days.

I'm thinking that after I knit up the beautiful Yarn Love I have in my stash that it's time to lay off the variegated sock yarns. Whaddya think?

Discovering jewels

I found a JEWEL in the Connecticut River Valley this weekend. There were many contenders: the lovely, unpretentious B&B we stayed at, Riverwind Inn; the old school French restaurant where Poem-man and I actually got to speak French, Restaurant du Village; the fancy inn where we enjoyed the gardens and elegant food, Bee and Thistle Inn, and the lovely Goodspeed Opera House (unfortunately the production was the fake paste gem of the weekend.)

But the jewel of the trip was Yarns Down Under. Poem-man and I got lost and annoyed driving around the River Valley and as we (unbeknownst to us) neared our B & B, I saw a little sign for the store with an arrow pointing down a road! Woo hoo! Dust flew as a hung a yoouuie (as I call a u-turn) and on we went. I had read that there was a yarn store in the village we were staying in and I assumed I would find it on Deep River's small main street area, but I hadn't, and had thus decided I wasn't really going to go looking for it since I hadn't planned on any yarn purchasing during the weekend, but THERE IT WAS, the place around the next bend that would make our getting lost worth it! We drove on a small road, parked in a gravel driveway over looking a small golf course, and I turned to Poem-man and said if it's scary or small we'll leave right away. We made our way past a golfing office and down some stairs becoming more unsure that this was the right thing to do and walked into a YARN HAVEN! Really, this is a yarn store for Knitters, capital K and double Ts!

All the yarns you haven't seen in person are there, including the great Simply Shetland stuff, Bear Mountain sock yarn, Claudia HandPaints, every kind of Schaefer yarn, all kinds of Rowans--everything! This is a store for people who knit, really knit. What do I mean by that? Well, there's great quality yarn of every kind of fiber, but it's not yarn for the sake of yarn (and expensive yarn at that, i.e. Purl Soho). The store is organized by fiber and weight but is delightfully crammed full of yarn enough to feel like you'll keep uncovering wonderful yarn after yarn. Sheila, the owner (on the right), and Sheryl (Cheryl? Sherri? sorry!) were great people to ask questions of and talk to who really knew their stuff. There are kits they've created for particular projects, yarn spun and dyed (I think) of local purveyors, tons of books, well just everything! I even got a back issue of Interweave Knits (2004!) that I had wanted. I wish I had been more prepared to really shop, list of yarn needs in hand. For instance, I'm thinking my next project is a EPS sweater with a fair isle-ish yoke and this store would have been the place to put that together, but I wasn't prepared. All I bought was some Noro Kureyon for a felted purse (see in my I wanna Knit list). I would go back in a heartbeat to shop. And, they have a knitting retreat next summer---must get on bandwagon! Or perhaps an Autumn trip to this area with a few knitting chums, hmmm?

Well, the wedding afghan has seen no progress since Friday since I was away during this weekend and it is a at-home project not meant to be dragged around in the heat. More excitingly, here's the happy couple recipients-to-be of the afghan! It was a joyous, thoughtful, meaningful wedding and reception. I love weddings! I'm re-inspired to work on the afghan! On the other hand: 1. They're young. 2. It's too hot to enjoy an afghan right now. 3. They know the afghan is coming. 4. Ms. Manners says I have up to a year to give a wedding gift. I'll get it done!

And look we all got mini-wedding cakes for dessert!