Last week I went to Madrona. which gave me a great opportunity to stock up on some Goth Socks and get quite a bit of knitting done!

First I worked on the socks that my mom abandoned, mentioned a couple posts before this one. Although my mom gave them back to me because she didn’t like the color, I got tons of compliments while wandering around Madrona and knitting them. And it wasn’t long before they were finished!

Yarn: Four Seasons Gründl Hot Socks, color 933
Started: ? Fall 2008
Finished: 2/17/2012

Then I pulled out another longstanding WIP, my Herbivore. After checking the pattern to see where I had left off, I realized that I only had a few more rows to knit if I wanted it to be the length specified in the pattern. Because I had quite a bit of yarn left, I did a few extra repeats.

Pattern: Herbivore by Stephen West
Yarn: Tosh Merino Light in Baltic
Started: 2/20/2011
Finished: 2/20/2012

Coincidentally I finished it exactly one year after I started. I bought the yarn last year either from the Fiber Gallery Madrona booth, or immediately after coming home.

I also made quite a bit of progress on some plain socks from yarn I dyed in Stephania’s class in December:

I went to Portland last weekend to visit my sister and my friend Rachel, who was visiting the west coast from New York! We went to two yarn stores, but I managed to avoid getting any new yarn.

I also finished Ishbel on the train – here it is blocking (excuse the bad cell phone picture):

The wedding is next weekend, so I’ll try to get more pictures of my friend wearing it then.

After finishing Ishbel, I became mysteriously inspired to work on my Herbivore, which I started in February and have been neglecting ever since.

The color is actually this one:

Madelinetosh Tosh Merino Light in Baltic

As you can see I’m still having too much fun with Instagram.

Totally unrelated to knitting, I really like Instagram. You can take fun little square photos with your smartphone, apply various pictures, tag them with a location and post them to your twitter / Facebook / whatever.

I haven’t been posting much because I’ve been hard at work designing and knitting secret things, but here’s a bit of an update.

My new pattern, Isaz on Ravelry (linked) and Knit Picks IDP.

Last weekend I met my friend Nicole for brunch (and sadly not much knitting) but while I was waiting I got a hot chocolate and worked on the Ishbel that I’m knitting in ivory Handmaiden Sea Silk for my friend Christina’s wedding that I’ll be attending in mid-June.

Never fear, I am now well into the lace on this shawl, and I have until June 9th.

Today Nicole and Mimi and I went on a bit of the Puget Sound LYS Tour. Last year I did the whole thing (I believe last year it was 27 shops!) so this year I felt like I didn’t need to try to do it all again. Instead we just hit some of the new shops we hadn’t been to and a couple old favorites that aren’t close to home, like this one in West Seattle.

One of the new shops, Serial Knitters in Kirkland, was really great! And they had star cookies, which is always a plus for me. 😉

So there you have it!

The last few days have been spent at Madrona along with all the west coast knitters who aren’t at Stitches West. (OK, maybe not *all*.)

I’ve shopped a bit – mostly Gothsocks with a bit of Toots LeBlanc, Rain City Fiber Arts and Abstract Fiber Arts to top off the bag. Overall a small but quality yarn accumulation. The rest of the time was spent knitting, spinning, and chatting with other fiber folks.

I also finished some socks in my newest pattern, Isaz:

Pattern: Isaz
Yarn: Three Fates Yarns Terra Sock in Fenrir
Started: 12/27/10
Finished: 2/18/11

This was the mystery KAL in the Three Fates Yarns group on Ravelry, but it will be available soon.

I have festive candles!

I have festive socks!

Yarn: Vesper in “Candy Corn”
Started: 10/9/10
Finished: 10/29/10

Today I wore my candy corn socks… it’s a dream that’s taken a few years to achieve.

As for other non-Halloween things, I’ve been meaning to talk about my knitting trip to Port Townsend a couple weeks ago!

My lovely friend Erin had a birthday, so her sister came to town and the three of us headed out to the Olympic Peninsula for a relaxing weekend of knitting, coffee drinking, yarn shops, yummy food, and more yarn shops.

On the way there we stopped in Port Gamble and visited The Artful Ewe:

The whole store was full of baskets of fiber and yarn hanging on the walls… it was great! I found a skein of yarn there for my Blurple Waves blanket, some beautiful BFL sock yarn, and a bit of fiber.

Being silly me, I only brought a sweatshirt as I hadn’t needed a real coat yet this year… thank goodness Erin brought lots of knitwear and let me borrow some of it!

We also visited the yarn store in Port Townsend, Diva Yarn. It was small, but had lots of nice stuff. I got some Merisoft there for Blurple Waves. I’ve decided it’s a good project for souvenir yarn.

Perhaps the most amusing part of the trip to me was the sheer number of knitting projects I had packed. I spent Friday morning thinking “Oh, I should bring…!” and throwing yet another project into my bag. When I got there I realized I had brought the aforementioned Candy Corn socks, Cinnamon Grace, Pretty Thing, Skew, Girasole, and yarn to start the birthday socks for my sister.

After realizing how crazy I was to bring 5 WIPs and yarn for another project on a 2 night trip, I decided to work on each project at least once… and I did! Well, other than the birthday socks that didn’t get cast on.

I’ll leave you with the view from our hotel room:

Last weekend was the annual LYS Tour around here. The yarn stores band together, offer a free one skein pattern and a discount on the yarn to knit it, and us knitters run around crazily getting our passports stamped at the stores – 25 this year! It was my first year actually touring on the tour, since last year I attended every day at one store – the one where I worked.

Thursday night after work I headed to 4 of the stores that are more or less on my way home from work… Weaving Works, Bad Woman, Full Circle (this was a new one for me) and Fiber Gallery.

Friday I met up with a couple of friends and hit So Much Yarn on our way out to Bainbridge where we visited Churchmouse and had a lovely dinner at Cafe Nola.

We got to “ride” the scooter:

And then got totally soaked running to the ferry in the rain…

… while eating ice cream from Mora!

A lovely but very chilly evening.

The next day some of us joined a bunch of others for a trek northward to 11 yarn stores! One of the stores had some lovely knitfiti outside.

Amy knit most of Fay’s socks on the drive:

After some dinner we took yet another ferry home.

Then on Sunday a few of us hit the remaining stores, where we found this hilarious Opal yarn:

An Austrian pop “singer”, Antonia, wears a different slutty outfit on every ball band! We’re not sure exactly who the target audience is for this yarn, but it was too hilarious to pass up, so a couple of us bought some:

(Click the first picture to enlarge for a view of more of the outfits!)

All in all an amazing weekend, now back to the secret knitting!

Listening to: The Outsider ~ A Perfect Circle, Reading In Bed ~ Emily Haines and the Soft Skeleton, Digital Bath ~ Deftones

Well, my trip to New York City, Connecticut, Rhinebeck, and Boston was awesome. Of course, I hardly took any pictures, because I am *horrible* at remembering to take pictures. I returned home with a total of 9 pictures on my camera, and 6 of those were of my friend Rachel and her shawl.

But I figured I had to show you something…

I flew into NYC on Friday evening and took the airtrain (I think that’s what it’s called) and subway into Grand Central Station. On the way I saw a woman who I can only assume was selling pirated DVDs (she was saying something that sounded like a high-pitched beeping, but I think it was D-V-D-V-D-V) and two boys who broke out their boombox and were brakedancing on the subway – except I couldn’t see them all that well because a bunch of other people were in the way.

I met up with Rachel and her cousin there, we had some dinner and took the train to CT. I got to spend the night at my favorite house – Rachel’s family lives in a really really old house, I believe her dad said 230 years old. And there are all kinds of crazy things like keyholes in the floorboards and corn cobs in the walls!

In the morning Rachel modeled her new shawl, and then we got silly:

Then we headed off to Rhinebeck where we did many things, including meeting these adorable alpacas!

I couldn’t help but notice their cloven hooves:

See, cute alpaca toes!

And then, we had the opportunity to take a really cool picture. As some of you might remember, I met Rachel while we were both working at A Good Yarn in Massachusetts. Well, now we’re both in different states, but we ran into the owner of the store at Rhinebeck and got to take a picture together. Plus, look at all that knitwear!

I also noticed, while looking through old posts, that the sweater I wore was supposed to be my Rhinebeck sweater last time I was there – except it was like 70 degrees. So I’m glad it finally got to serve its purpose!

Later, more on my yarnful trip to Boston, and about 5 yarn stores in the general vicinity.

Well, last weekend was one full of sock knitting adventures.

Friday afternoon I drove down to Portland with one of my Seattle knitting friends. We met up with a few other knitters for dinner – there was a wait for tapas so we headed up to The Secret Society while we waited, which ended up being my dinner. My mom picked me up and took me back to Salem, but I hear the tapas place was really good.

Saturday morning I got up bright and early and met some of the Salem knitters for the trip up to Sock Summit. We hit the marketplace and attempted to proceed in an orderly fashion, somewhat hampered by the fact that we kept pausing in different booths and I kept stopping every three minutes to say hi to yet another person that I know. I actually never really thought about how many knitters I know, but it is a lot and they were well-represented at Sock Summit.

After lunch at Burgerville (where they are so nice as to put the calorie count on your receipt and totally spoil your lunch!) we made a quick detour to go see our friend’s lovely yarn and the samples we knit from it!

And my pattern was there too!

And then… there was more shopping. And a bit of knitting, and dinner, and Ravelry partying. I didn’t take any pictures.

Sunday I did a quick last look at the marketplace before heading home. I wish I had more time, but I guess I’ll just remember that for next time. It was amazing, even without the classes and events!

There has been quite a bit of sock knitting going on around my house these past few weeks, but tomorrow I am off to the Sock Summit!

But first, here are some Monkey socks I knit in a swap:

Pattern: Monkey
Yarn: Pine Woods Yarn – I bought this at SPA a couple of years ago
Started: 7/12/09
Finished: 7/26/09

Forgive the bad picture, I misplaced my camera battery so I just snapped that with my iPhone before sending them off to the recipient.

The yarn was really lovely. I bought it because it was the “best” color there, a blue-green, but I didn’t use it because it just seemed too green to me. As soon as I started knitting the socks for someone else I wished I had kept that pretty yarn for myself, but I have plenty of beautiful yarn for me so I’m glad these socks went to a home where they’ll be loved. The yarn is a wool-nylon blend and it was very nice to work with and produced a very nice sock. I think it will wear quite well too, as it’s more of a firm stringy texture – more like Trekking than the sproingy Socks That Rock, for example.

As for Sock Summit, I’m not taking any classes. Just planning on hanging out at the marketplace with my knitting buddies on Saturday and going to the Ravelry party, of course. I’m also excited to see a couple sample socks I knit and my newest pattern, Falling Up for sale there.

The mission? Only buy semi-solid yarns. I’ve been using a lot of them lately while designing and knitting more complex patterns and the variegated yarn isn’t getting as much love, so I think it’s time to stock up.

Saturday after posting the Happy Birthday to MJ, I set out with my fellow Salem knitters and went on a yarn crawl in the Eugene area.

First we went to Ben Franklin, where I wasn’t inspired to buy anything. They had a very nice selection of sock yarns, but most of them were things I had already. We went on to The Knit Shop which was really a nice store. They had a pretty decent selection of sock yarn (and a really great selection of lots of other stuff, but I’m not really an “other stuff” knitter). I wanted to get some Panda Wool, but none of the colors really appealed to me so I restrained myself.

Next we hit Soft Horizons where I found some Zauberball. This is a strange stripey yarn rolled into a rather lopsided ball – and in beautiful blues. I also couldn’t resist a skein of Dream In Color Smooshy in Some Summer Sky. So pretty! I’ve been trying to pick semisolids or very lightly variegated yarn when I buy now, since I like to knit more complex patterns but don’t like it when they don’t show up.

Our last stop was Fiber Nooks and Crannies. They had a lovely store with lots of yarn and a small selection of spinning fiber. A huge amount of Koigu too! And a nice selection of sock yarn including some beautiful Arucania stuff that sadly had silk. I would have bought it otherwise.

It was a lot of fun to hang out with all the knitters, and nice to see so many new shops too.

As for knitting, I’ve been slogging along on a few different things, but nothing exciting enough for pictures except this:

I wove! After reading a book about weaving and doing a little experimentation with the loom – I had to figure out how to tie the heddles so they would move – I started a little practice weaving with the warp that was already there and some random scraps of yarn.

The tension is really uneven since I was too lazy to tie the warp on properly and it’s been sitting on there for upwards of 15 years, so I think it’s slipped sideways a bit. Also there were a couple of strings missing, you can see a thicker band of stitches (?) towards the middle.

But so far not bad. I learned how to make the heddles move properly, learned what kind of tension I need, fashioned a shuttle of sorts, and learned how to change yarn (you can see a bit of pink peeking out. I also learned that using a fuzzy single ply warp is probably not the best for a beginner – the strands sort of stick together and make it a bit hard to separate so there are a few spots where one of the “up” yarns stayed down and vice-versa. (Yeah, my weaving speak is so technical.)

I think I will go ahead with my sock yarn project, provided I can figure out how to warp the loom. And I’ve also discovered, already, that two heddles is not enough. With two you can only do a plain or “tabby” weave. That’s what I wanted for my sock yarn scarf anyway, but if I was going to get into weaving I would want to be able to do stuff that was a little more complicated. I think I would definitely want at least a 4 heddle loom.

Listening to: Strange Machines ~ The Gathering, Muzzle, Smashing Pumpkins