My wee tiny sock arrived at it’s destination late last week. My recipient was KnittingGnome.

And the one headed my way made it on Saturday.

Here it is in all it’s wee tinyness with the adorable sheep stitch marker she sent with it, from Sheep In The City Stacey. Thanks Stacey! It’s adorable.

And Thanks Yarn Miracle for hosting the whole wee-tiny sock swap. It was great fun and far less work than a lot of the other swaps.

Thank you for the wonderful response to the blogiversary post! It’s amazing how a few little links and a teeny bit of shameless self promotion can spawn so many great commenters to come out of the woodwork. It’s by far the most response I’ve had to any one post on the blog to date. There are still a couple weeks to post (I set my drawing date the day after the Harlot is in Ann Arbor not thinking to look at the calendar and realize that that is still another two weeks out, but it’ll give some stragglers a chance to pop over and discover it in the mean time.) I’ve found some great new blogs to read through those comments too.

I haven’t really knit much since I finished up my hat. I signed up for the wee tiny sock swap on YarnMiracle’s blog and have been picking at a teeny sock, and I may pick up another project to pick at here and there in the mean time while we wait for the next round of Sock Madness to start.

Speaking of sock madness, specs for round two were posted today. STR, US1 needles. I used STR the last round for my zombies, but they didn’t specify varigated vs semi-solid this time, so I’m leaning towards using either the Fairgrounds colorway or the Knitty colorway. I’ll have a few more days to sort that out though, it looks like the pattern won’t drop in our inboxes until sometime on April 1st.

Instead of knitting, I’ve been working on getting the apartment back to some level of almost-orderly, and I’ve been experimenting with some advertising stuff behind the scenes on the blog. The site I signed on with seems to draw a lot of webcomics, but there are a handful of crafty advertisers poking around there and it makes me smile a little when they out bid the comics for my little ad spots. I’m trying very hard to keep the ads small and unobtrusive and off to the side or down in the footer. Let me know if they get annoying or out of hand.

I also finally replaced my ancient cell phone. It was falling apart, wouldn’t hold a charge for more than one call, and was making a clicking noise in the background when I talked. So yesterday when the screen display started getting flaky, it was time. My new one is an LG Scoop. It’s nice having a functional phone again and it’s so much newer than the old one that I have all sorts of new gadgets built in that are going to be fun to experiment with. I’ve finally joined the era of the camera phone. It just took me like 3 years to get here.

 And I’ve had another finished dishcloth laying around that’s ready for it’s day in the limelight. This one’s even more abstract than the ferris wheel was, but it should sort of look like steel coaster track.

Click here for the pdf file.

I have been working on stuff, and I have some cool stuff to share, I just haven’t gotten it all assembled in blog post format. Shame on me.

First I have to thank Terri for my Knitter’s Tea Swap package! She totally rocks! She sent knitting fiction (yay books!!), an ass-ton of tea, seriously like 4 boxes or something crazy like that, plus 4 skeins of yarn in great colorways (how did you know I wanted to try the panda wool?) and some good dark chocolate.

Prior to that package arriving, my birthday order at the Loopy Ewe gained me membership into the Loopy Groopies. I got the great extra gifts that go along with having spent way too much money with Sherri. A really cool project bag, some chocolate kisses, some wool wash, and a black and grey skein of Opal. Plus the 3 colorways of Claudia’s and one of Lorna’s that I bought for the actual purchase.

However, I’ve been slowly inventorying the stash and getting it into Ravelry and I’ve come to the realization that I really really need to put the spending on hiatus for a bit. It’s taken me forever just to get the sock yarn stash photographed and entered into the system. I’ve got 63 pairs worth stashed on the site, and I still have 5 or 6 more to photograph and add. I haven’t even tackled the scary room where everything else lives. Or the mess of needles and crochet hooks. Reality is freeing in some ways and scary as hell in others. It’ll be nice to finally know what all I have once I’m done though, and organizing it all electronically might be the push I need to get some sort of organization system in place physically as well.

My biggest birthday gift to myself was a new PC, and I’m starting to slowly get that set up as well and making the move up to Vista.

I also haven’t been completely neglecting the coaster hobby either. I spent Friday at Cedar Point for Coastermania. There is one great crazy story from that that defies definition. I have a friend Kris who is one of those fearless people who will do absolutely anything and not be embarrassed. I also have some other friends who have no issues throwing money at something if it’ll be entertaining. The combo, deadly. We were standing in a shop and someone made a joke about those little girly shorts with the words on the butt. Kris made the offhand remark of “if you buy them, I’ll wear them. ” No less than 10 minutes later, he is in a light blue pair of short shorts with the words “Get in line!” across the butt with his polo shirt tucked in.

Same conversation at a different locale of the park landed him a set of light-up blinky bunny ears. This was his ensemble for the remainder of the evening. I haven’t laughed so hard in ages. People watching was hilarious the rest of the night as we caught everything from people trying to do the sideways-glance-don’t-let-him-see-us-looking-at-him, to outright pointing and staring, asking for photographs, and everything in between. He totally played it up, high fiving random people on the midway, waving to the passing train, and chatting up people in line. My ribs still hurt from laughing so hard.

My third round sock madness socks are done now. I don’t know what it was about this pattern, but it this round seems to be going a lot slower than the previous rounds.

Unfortunately, I didn’t finish quite quick enough to get through to the next round. But I got a finished pair of socks out of the deal. Or, actually, mom got a finished pair of socks out of the deal. I brilliantly started the toe too soon on the first sock, so they were short enough to be uncomfortable for me, and fit my mom perfectly.

I’m still digging for the tag from this yarn as it was fabulous to work with and I loved how the colors came out and I want to attribute that hand-painting work to the proper person and maybe see if they have more for sale. All I know is that it was an ebay purchase sometime last spring and the colorway is called Muted Sunset. Very aptly named and I felt like the plain stockinette sections of the sock definitely have a streaky clouded sunset look to them, no strange pooling or striping, just well distributed hand painted colors.

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Update: I found the tag for the yarn! It was dyed by Aspen Moon Arts.

Stupid me had to do silly things like sleep, and work. Oh well, I can slow down on finishing the second sock now (who am I kidding, it’ll still get finished tonight). Congrats linnakat, I’ll be cheering you on in the sweet 16!

• A trend.
• A free variation on the pattern that I actually kinda like a little better than the original.
• A knitter with a weakness for anything remotely reminiscent of amusement parks. (as an aside to the yarn-dyers out there who may stumble upon this, please don’t take note of this particular obsession of mine, I’d like to have a little money left to visit the amusement parks too).
• A far too convenient shopping locale.
• A very dangerous loophole that I have yet to close.

There’s one obvious and logical conclusion that can come from adding up all of these factors.

I spent Monday evening working on the start of a Claudia’s Handpainted carousel & cotton candy chevron scarf.

And I love it!

Sock Madness Round 2.

Here’s where I was when I crashed for the night Thursday night.Â

I kitchnered the first toe at 2:30 Saturday morning.

After sleeping in until noon on Saturday, I cast on sock # 2. It’s toe got seamed up at about 1:45 Sunday morning.Â

Four calendar days start to finish, but a total of about 25 hours of work.

My hands hurt and I’m tired, but they’re done, and I think I’m through to the next round. I can’t imagine I’ll last too much longer in the competition though, I’m not the last to finish qualifying in my bracket, but I’m among the last.

Loved the pattern this round though, even if all the passed over stitches were especially hard on my hands. The resulting socks in sport-weight yarn (I used Lornas Laces in Daffodil) are warm and fit wonderfully. And the colors are so springy.

Oh, and if you’re a knitter, it would really be in your best interest to comment on my blogiversary post for the prize… Lets just say that your odds are really really really good, and it would be a shame for me to have to keep the yarn for myself.

and it’s name is Sock Madness….

I finished the first pair of sock madness socks in record time (for me) today. I got a late start because of the whole Cali trip (which was awesome) and didn’t cast on sock #1 until Sunday afternoon. A Lazy day on Monday saw the first sock finished. I cast on and knit the cuff of sock #2 on the redeye flight home Monday night, turned the heel on the bus ride from the airport and finished up the foot Tuesday afternoon and evening closing up the toe after my bedtime around 12:30. Even with my late start, I still managed to complete early enough to make it into the next round so I’m gearing up for round 2’s head to head soon.

In addition to knitting an entire pair of socks in three days (as if that weren’t enough)… I finished up the first Baudelaire early in the trip and turned the heel on the first Pomotomous on the trip out too. So, sock madness still extends beyond the insanity of the competition. The Pomo in 100% merino is squishy and amazing but slow going, the Baud is in Sundara sock yarn, and I’m absolutely adoring knitting with it and the color (denim over purple) is amazing and incredibly rich looking in this pattern. The photos don’t do it justice. Plus, it’s my first time doing a toe-up sock and I’m enjoying that process as well. However, because the first Pomo is on the needles, I won’t be starting the second Baud right away so I can keep a set of size 2’s open for future Sock Madness. I have my priorities…

In case you haven’t noticed, I’m on a bit of a sock kick right now. It’s been all socks all the time so far this year (except for that one scarf, it might have been a fluke). Lots of Sock-related KAL’s over in that sidebar.

So, naturally, I finished another pair this weekend. The speed socks are done. These were zippy fast. I cast on last Friday and cast off yesterday a few hours before the Oscars. Simple stockinette socks with a Lana Grossa self striping yarn in gray and blues and greens.

I’d intended to cast on my first toe-up pair last night during the ceremony, but static electricity thwarted my yarn winding efforts and I spent the entire ceremony untangling the mess.

However, now I have a gorgeous skein of Sundara’s sock yarn (in Denim over Purple) all ready to go and be cast on tonight.

Sock Madness starts in a couple weeks and I’ve been gearing myself up for the strain of competitive sock knitting.

Some of my strategies:

1) Finished the cotton socks. They were sitting by the computer with just the toe on the second sock waiting to be knit. I finished it up last night while playing with my new toy. These have been a long term project. Not out of necessity, I just haven’t felt the need to zip through them. They would get a row or two here and there, gradually progressing until the second sock was just close enough that I just sat down with it and finished it up. I’m pretty sure I cast on for these in late July/early August. Definitely a back-burner project.

2) Increased my speed. I knit an entire stockinette sock this past weekend. Cast on Friday night, kitchnered the toe at about 2am on Monday. The second sock is progressing a little slower in the evenings during the week but I’ll probably have another finished pair this weekend. In project spectrum colors even.

3) The new toy. I succumed to the allure of time-delayed TV and added a Tivo to my plethora of gadgetry in the house. I’m also letting myself get a little obsessed with it, so it’s going to have lots available for me to watch and knit during the marathon.

4) Vacation time. The marathon’s official start date is a Saturday… a Saturday that I will be spending in California in an amusement park. I’m hoping to “catch up” though. I’ll be able to steal a little time here and there on Saturday and Sunday to get started, print things out on Sunday and continue progressing Monday. I’ll have the whole flight back on Monday night, and I’m considering taking Tuesday off as well which will give me another free day to hopefully catch up and keep running with it.

5) New skills. I think I’ve dabbled in most of the requisite skills here and there, not all at sock scale, but I’ve done some color work, a little lace, a few cables. The only thing I haven’t done yet with socks is toe-up construction. So, once the second sock for the speed pair above is done, I’m going to work on my first toe-up pair that will be another long-term sock sock project. I’m considering either Baudelaire’s or Falling in Love as they will both give me good training on toe-up construction, plus a refresher on lace and cables.

6) Supplies. Most of the required supplies I have in my stash. I did place an order with the Loopy Ewe to fill in the blanks. So I should be all set on needles now and filled in some of the solids to go with varigates I already own.

7) Progress on the backburner projects. Pomotomous has become my stand in for the cotton socks now that those are done. I love the pattern, but the sock just gets a few rows here and there in between other things. It progresses slowly, but they’ll get done eventually. I should also finally revisit the legwarmers, make a decision and either frog or continue.

I probably should plan a mad dash at housecleaning prior to the start date as well, we’ll see if that happens or not over the next two weeks.