A Whack of Socks

I pity the person with the second sock syndrome... maybe it's envy, it's really hard to say. In any case, with four little-boy feet and two little-big-girl feet, socks do not come by the pair at my house. They come by what the Harlot refers to as a "whack". I'm not Canadian, but - for our purposes, at least - socks come four to a whack. Of course, if you do have a problem with finishing a pair, you may want to consider knitting 'em by the whack, then. You can finish when you're half done and still have a sock for each of your feet.


Madam's slipper socks. These have actually been done for a while, but they were snatched, worn and funked before I could photograph them, so the picture had to wait until after I washed them. Generic short-row heel pattern, in Bartlett 2-ply (heavy worsted/aran) and some unknown cream color wool.



Crocs socks for little boys who are obsessive about their crocs. Again, generic flap-heel (which I like better) recipe, in sport-ish weight BFL/mohair handspun from Spinning Flock Farm. Lovely and soft. I will totally be stalking their booth at the Sheep & Wool festival in a couple of months. (Yes, those socks ARE all the same size. Really. It's just the stacking that makes them seem off.)

Yarn porn

My friend, Beth, posted yarn porn on her blog the other day. For any non-knitters, "yarn porn" is the pictorial of your pillaging acquisition after a trip to the yarn store. This may be a term actually coined by Beth.

Of course, like any good porn viewed with no outlet at one's disposal, the yarn porn kept me up last night. Then, frustrated, I drifted off to dream of sock yarn. Handpainted sock yarn. Beautiful, flowing sock yarn, running through my fingers as I slipped a pointy, silver pin behind each perfect little stitch and... huh? where was I? Oh, right. Excuse me.

Anyway, today, we went to look at a lovely 110 year old upright piano, which we will be buying so the little children can take lessons and make wonderful music. The little children stayed with Auntie while we looked and we took the opportunity to sneak to stop by Inez's Stitchery, which, if you're ever in the Silver Spring area, you should really visit, as they are a proper yarn store, with lots of wool and inspirational, handwritten signs like "BLOCKING means WETTING". Heehee.

There was a lovely selection of sock yarn, though I managed to make all purchases in the Brown Sheep family... hmmm.


Left, top to bottom: Wildfoote in Rock N' Roll (2), Bluegrass, and Ragtime.
Right, Nature Spun in Amethyst, Pagan Pink and Red Fox.
(Note the nifty little pointy sock pins. They say 4-ought on them, but they're bigger than that. I'll have to gauge, but I'm guessing 0 or 1)


Please note that, while Beth's porn is of the highest quality, a classic in its own time, mine is more of the campy, homemade variety. Do not despair for me, however; the hubby is currently working "stashtime" (that's overtime that he knows is going to be converted) for the Sheep & Wool Festival, only three months away! Come mother's day weekend, I'll be like a repressed divorcee turned loose at Hedonism!

I can't wait to finish my other socks, which I'm knitting by the "whack" as the Harlot would say (there are 4 socks in a pair for the boys) in lovely handspun 70 wool/30 mohair sportweight. More on those when they're officially FOs and I can have my way with the new stuff.

Finished objects...

I've finished some objects this week. Let us be clear that said objects have been languishing in my knitting bag (one of the many, actually) and really only needed minimal finishing. The boys' woolies are getting a little long in the tooth and short in the waist, so it seemed like time to add some legs and weave in my ends on these.

LTK longies, knit knee length, with the curly-purly waist in 100purewool "winter joy".

LTK Longies, knit knee length, in HPY thick and thin (discontinued), unknown colorway name.

My American accent... who knew?

So, I'm orginally from Maine. This should come as no shock to people who know me, only because I've told them. Otherwise, I pronounce Rs, even in combination with a preceeding vowel, never say "a'yuh" and, generally speaking have no accent. Really. I know people think they don't have an accent, but I really, really don't. So isn't it interesting that this ridiculous quiz pegged me. (Well, except they apparently don't know there's anything north of Rhode Island, except Boston, a whole accent unto itself.) Am I missing something?

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Northeast   Judging by how you talk you are probably from north Jersey, New York City, Connecticut or Rhode Island. Chances are, if you are from New York City (and not those other places) people would probably be able to tell if they actually heard you speak.
Philadelphia
The Midland
The Inland North
Boston
The South
The West
North Central
What American accent do you have? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

The Green Hat-Along

So, one of the local knitting geeks posted to a local knitting group about the Green Hat Knit Along and, being the huge geek that I am, I simply couldn't resist. I haven't "officially" joined, mainly because I'm too lazy to create an account. Also, I had to finish Natalie's stuff and Bailey's slipper socks before I could start a new project - especially one for me! - in good conscience. Also, I couldn't find a pattern. I have this absolutely yummy hand painted merino and can't find a pattern to knit a hat. Issues. Really, my issue isn't a dearth of patterns - there are certainly a bazillion hat patterns on the 'net - but a strong dislike for hats. And it's not really that I don't like hats, rather, I have long hair that is worn up almost all the time and the donning of a hat results in my looking like I have a rodent stow-away on the back of my head. Add to that the fact that my hair is almost always put up with sitcks and the look gets even more interesting. Only a beret would do, then. I looked at beret patterns. Hundreds of beret and tam patterns, patterns for "pithy" hats... and then I began to understand that, in order to do justice to this lovely wool, I would simply have to design my own. I've decided to do a cabled band, topped with a bit of seed stitch, then your standard beret increase.

I probably, in retrospect, should have used a provisional cast-on and grafted the band into a round, but I had already frogged a bunch of cable prototypes and temporarily lost my mind, so this puppy will have a seamed edge to the band.

I do enjoy how the slipped edge stitches mirror the cables. Couldn't have worked out better if I'd planned it that way. Well, I did plan to slip the stitches to give a nice area for picking up for the rest of the hat, but I had no idea they'd behave so nicely. The seed stitch flanked cable is nice and firm, to combat the tendency of merino to want to stretch with use. I think of everything. Except, of course, that provisional cast on.

Bailey's party!

Grandma and Pop-pop did some festive foraging in Chinatown and in the goodies packed away from their trip to China, and Auntie - in the regular Auntie style - decked the halls with lanterns, dragons and fans and set up a Chinese eatery for the kids.

Bailey is most thankful for the party.

The boys are only there for the hats, really.

Wait! Was that the lo mein that was just delivered? Nope, just another picture of the marzipan on top of the cake!

I also finally got Natalie's birthday gifts to her. I felt terrible at Christmas - already three weeks past her birthday - that the gloves weren't done and I totally couldn't find the hat... of course, being late meant that I had time to knit her the calorimetry from this winter's Knitty issue. She almost always wears her hair up and when I saw that, I knew it would be perfect. Now her ears will be nice and toasty! AND I found her hat, so if she decides to wear her hair down, she's still warm and fuzzy. She was very excited about the flip mittens, too.

And then I made a cake...

Bailey's 6th birthday theme was Chinese New Year. It was totally her idea, we were thinking a tea party would be nice, but what do we know, really? The party was lots of fun, of course. Auntie is unequalled at planning and executing these things. She was a little at a loss because the food was ordered, so she had nothing to cook in those last few hours. I took on the cake project and needed something to work with our theme. What says "Chinese New Year birthday party" better than a big ol' container of lo mein? So I made a half-sheet of butter cake, cut it into thirds and filled it with some yummy chocolate pastry cream, applied some rolled fondant and stuffed in my marzipan lo mein...



and painted a blue willow-esque scene. (that dog is a pig... it IS, after all, the year of the pig)

Then, I added some calligraphy that says "Happy Birthday Bailey" in Madarin characters.





I was quite tickled that the guy delivering our feast saw the cake, from the calligraphy side and asked who Bailey was... then wished her a happy birthday! Birthday pictures are next. Hang on!