For the love of socks

What a weekend! Saturday I drove down to Portland for Sock Summit, which was incredible!! I stayed with a friend in Dallas OR Saturday night, then drove back up to Portland for a class Sunday morning. If I didn’t have to work, I would have been there the whole time! It’s just amazing to walk into a huge conference area surrounded by people that you’ve never met before, and still feel completely at ease with everyone and everything. Knitters are just so neat like that; people from all walks of life, coming together in friendly near-chaos. So cool.

My class was on knitting lace socks, taught by Anne Hanson. I’ve drooled over and knit up several of her designs, and her blog is a highlight on my RSS feed. Though most of us in the class were already lace knitters, it was fabulous to hear her go over the fundamental basics of lace. I figure there will always be something I can learn from someone who has been knitting since she was five years old. It was such a wonderful opportunity, and I feel very fortunate to live within driving distance of the Summit, as well to have won the class spot in the lottery. I can’t say anymore that I never win anything!

It was terribly difficult to behave myself in the Marketplace, but I had to. (I’m saving my pennies for a new Macbook Pro.) I decided to not get any more sock yarn, even though I was surrounded by it! I already have enough sitting in my stash, so I turned my focus on other things. My fiber stash isn’t all that great, so I started out by stopping at the Tactile booth to see what they had. Brooke and her darling baby boy helped me pick out a sampler of Alpaca:

Five ounces of the stuff! It’s sooo soft and yummy, and Brooke showed me a new spinning trick. I can’t wait to try it. My next stop was to see Chris from Briar Rose Fibers; her booth was brimming with so many beautiful yarn and samples, I had to sleep on it before I could decide which to buy! The lace bug that has bitten me prevailed, and I walked away with 2500 yards of Angel Face Alpaca laceweight:

2500 yards! More than enough for a couple of decently-sized shawls; maybe one as a gift, and one for me. Finally, I wanted more fiber, and I kept going back to the Girl on the Rocks booth. Karrie had some wonderful fiber and yarn, and after much deliberation and drooling I bought this:

Superwash Merino, white with dashes of blues, purples and greens, all my favorites in one. LOVE. And there’s nearly five ounces of it, which can get me quite a bit of yarn.

I’ve also been knitting some socks, of course. Last week I started some Roger Socks, as well as a pair of Waving Lace Socks for Anne’s class. I’ve just started the lace socks, and I’m on the heel of the first Roger sock. Socks are so wonderfully portable. I actually found myself knitting on one while I was stuck at a dead stop in traffic during rush hour last week. Yet another example of how incredibly awesome socks are.

Madrona!

I have several things to blog about, so let’s start with this, shall we?

A couple weeks ago I made the short trek down to Tacoma for the Madrona Fiber Arts Winter Retreat. Last year I just went down to spend some money at the Marketplace, and this year I signed up for a class on Saturday. I had the great privilege of taking a class taught by the Yarn Harlot herself. Stephanie uses a style of knitting that she calls Irish Cottage Knitting, also known as lever knitting, and I have great respect for her and the patience she has teaching this method! Every single knitter in that class was rendered dumb and our once-agile fingers suddenly were completely useless. We quickly dubbed this style of knitting ‘Crazy Knitting’.

To her credit, Stephanie was incredible patient with us, even when we asked her for the billionth time to demonstrate how to hold and tension the yarn. She went around and devoted her attention to each knitter at least twice, and was very gracious after class to sign books and pose for pictures.

I will sadly admit that I totally dorked out when I talked to her afterwards. It was embarrassing, really, but she was totally cool about it.

Afterwards I jumped into the craziness that was the Marketplace.

So much yummy fiber! I was very good and didn’t spend nearly as much money as I could have, but I still wiped out my yarn budget for the next month, at least!

Starting from the bottom left corner: Two skeins of Socks That Rock from Blue Moon Fiber Arts, one skein of Silkie in the Gypsum colorway and one skein of Lightweight in Jubilation; fiber from Tactile Fiber Arts, 2 oz. of Sincere Sheep in Berries & Cream and 2 oz. of Blue Faced Leicester in Orchid; and enough Wooly Singles from Fly Designs to make this.

It was a good day at the Marketplace.

Saving some cash

Almost done with the first sock. I could have finished the last inch of the foot and toe last night, but I’m afraid my eyes were drooping just a tad bit too much from the long week! I really do love this yarn, and the colorway is fabulous. The browns are just so deep and rich. Love!

I’ve been eyeing some gadgets and equipment online, and frankly I’m a bit floored by how much money I can spend on tools for blocking garments and measuring my yarn. I’m not made of money, and I figure that the less of my ‘fun’ budget I spend on other things, the more I can spend on yarn! So I did a little Googling and found some great deals and ideas from other knitters.

First off, I’m already looking towards blocking the lace that’s on my needles. I’m not anywhere close to finishing this piece, but I wanted to have a peek at how much a wire blocking set would cost me. I found a nice set for $50, which was a bit steep for me. I kept looking and found the same exact set on Knitting Warehouse for nearly half the price.

Next was a blocking board, which retails for $80+. Um, no! Going through some forums on Ravelry, I found a blog post from a knitter who made her own blocking board. Brilliant! I found some red-and-white checkered fabric (the blocks are exactly 1 inch x 1 inch) for about $6 for two yards. I still need to track down the foam core boards, but I’m sure that won’t be a problem. I already have a ton of T-pins from previous blocking and the pins that came with my lace blocking kit. So I’m pretty sure I can construct a similar blocking board for well under $20.

Finally, I’ve been thinking about how I can figure out how much yardage I have of yarn leftover from projects. I’m looking into getting a small scale; I don’t want to get the cheapest thing on the market, because I would like it to be pretty accurate, but I don’t want to spend too much on it either. Then while I was poking around on Knitting Warehouse, I saw a yarn counter. Brilliant. This one is $30, and I think I found one somewhere else for $50. Again, a little pricey for me. And again, I poked around Ravelry and found someone who uses a fishing line counter for the same purpose. I found one at Joe’s for $20.

Hey, ten bucks can buy me a good chunk of roving! I think the guys in the fishing section were kind of amazed that I even knew what a line counter was. This morning I gave it a test run:

All I have to do is convert feet to yards, and voila! I wound up my Kauni into cakes so that I could see all of the layers of color:

(Yes, that’s three balls of Kauni; I got another one yesterday.) Look at those colors! I am SO excited to work with this stuff, I just have to practice some self-control and finish a couple other projects first.

Starting the New Year off right

Last night I was watching Ace of Cakes on Food Network, and Duff’s crew made a yarn basket cake with balls of yarn and knitted things for a lady’s 90th birthday. Probably the coolest cake I’ve ever seen!

To celebrate New Years, my friend Katie and I hit up the two yarn shops in the Seattle area that were actually open on the holiday. Both were having sales, of course, and Katie (who is a relatively new knitter) experienced Crazy Knitter Syndrome for the first time ever. The first shop we stopped at had opened it’s doors maybe ten or fifteen minutes before we got there, and the place was already super packed. Katie was a bit overwhelmed, so I bought what I had been able to snatch up and we headed to the next shop. Luckily, we made it there a few minutes before they opened, and we were two of the ten or so people who were waiting at the front door. Sweet.

I enhanced my stash with yarns that weren’t actually on sale (doh!) but that I’ve been itching to get my hands on for quite a while. First up was some Malabrigo Lace:

Quite possibly some of the softest bit of fluff I’ve ever held. The colors remind me of a beautiful summer day in the Pacific Northwest. Love it.

Next up is a yarn that I’ve been eyeing since I first held it at Madrona last year: Kauni.

I’ve been thinking about delving into the world of fair isle knitting, and I think the Kauni will push me over the edge. I’m eyeing Ruth Sørensen’s hats as my first fair isle projects.

So yes, not as many additions to my stash as the last major stash enhancement mission, but I think Katie’s official initiation into the Wide World of Knitting really made the day. We got her started on her first hat when we got home, and I also have her on the invitation wait list for Ravelry. We’ve already agreed that I created a monster today. Mission complete!

I’m such a slacker

Look at all those unfinished projects! —>

I’m determined to get a few of these off the needles before I start anything new. My knitting ADD has gotten way out of control! I just finished the last of my Waterfall socks (minus stitching up the toe, which I hope to get done tonight after work) and although I would love to cast on a pair of mitts with what’s leftover of the Fearless Fibers sock yarn, I need to hold off. I want to finish my Kureyon socks, and I bet Kristin would love to have her scrubbies sometime soon. All I need to do with the Flower Power scarf is weave in a bunch of ends (which I despise with a passion, and there are a lot of ends to weave in with that sucker) and I need to figure out what to do with the hat that’s too small. Rip it out and start over again? Finish and gift it to someone with a smaller head? Hmm.

Decisions, decisions.

Once some of these are finished, it’ll be stash busting time. Moving always makes you realize how much crap you have, and while I won’t classify my stash as crap, I certainly have a lot of yarn! There’s enough sock yarn in there to keep me busy for a good while, and lots of other lovelies that I’m not sure what I’m going to do with yet.

Madrona!

Last Saturday I conned my best friend who was visiting from out of town into going with me to the 2008 Madrona Fiber Arts Winter Retreat in Tacoma. She’s not into crafty things at all, so there wasn’t much of interest for her there. She was a real trooper, though, and went through the Marketplace with me on my initial round. That was about all the fiber and yarn she could handle, so she sat in the lobby and read her book while I went shopping.

And boy did I shop! Lookie at what’s been added to my stash:

Two skeins of Socks that Rock lightweight from Blue Moon Fiber Arts, in Carbon Dating and Korppi colorways.

Two skeins of Shepherd Worsted Multi from Lorna’s Laces in Wazoo.

More Noro Kureyon Sock yarn (yummy!)

Wooly Singles from Angora Valley Fibers in Isabella.

I took a few pics at the Marketplace, which are up on my Picasa Web Album. There were a lot of very friendly fellow fiber freaks, and I got to speak with several of them about my new almost-obsession: spinning!

One thing that Kristin saw, which she really liked, were a pair of felted slippers. Her apartment in the Bay Area gets pretty chilly in the winter, and she mentioned she would love felted slippers. That’s where the skein of Wooly Singles comes in!

I’ve made it past the toe (the pattern I’m using is basically a toe-up sock; new for me!) but so far they look like gigantic socks for an ogre. They’re pretty rad.

New to the stash

Looky what came in the mail for me today!

Superwash Merino Wool Sockyarn from Fearless Fibers. This yarn is so soft and squishy, and the colorway is absolutely to die for! I have my eye on a few sock patterns for this lovely bit of wool love. Of course, there are a few other socks in the queue already…

Some fabulous stitch markers came today, as well:

Dyed African opal stitch markers from zer0 markers. My Monday just got way happier!