Perfect Toes On My Jaffa Socks

I just finished my Jaffa Socks! I bought the yarn while I was in New Zealand from Stray Cat Socks.

I used the Jaffa color way. But man, oh man, I could just keep knitting with all her yarn. It wears well, the color sticks, and it isn't splitty. There are so many colors I am tempted by. (Mostly the Halloween colors that are up at the moment. Le sigh.)

Also, after getting some excellent feedback from you all as well as my knit night friends, I went ahead and kept the orange stripe on the tip of the toe. I was able to get the second sock to match by knitting an extra half a round. It really was too perfect to rip out.

So what am I knitting now? Well, I've finally gotten back to working on Equatorial Nights for my Mum. She is leaving on a trip and I was hoping to finish it in time for her to take.

Of course I thought I had until next week, but actually she is leaving this week. Connor called this the "When you have one week to finish a two week project" face.

I'm making good progress, but it is going to be a close one.

Sock Life

I've been catching up on reading a bunch of blogs and I was impressed with all the socks that have been finished and blogged about recently. Angela at Pans & Needles has two pair: one pair for herself and one secret pair for her beloved's Christmas gift this year. Monica at Sweet Purls has just finished a fun purple pair of socks. And Tahnee over at Woollen Wilderness has finished not just one, but two pairs of socks in just the last month: Pixel Socks and Spring Fern Socks. And those are just the finished ones. Andi at My Sister's Knitter has a cute pair on the needles while Wei Siew at Kiwiyarns is knitting a party for her feet. (She also just finished her Southern Skies... so you should all go "ooo and ahh" it.)

I have not been as successful in the knitting arena. I had hoped to have a finished something to show off by now, but it just hasn't worked out.

What I do have is one almost finished first sock and a second sock that is almost ready for its heel to be put in. Why an "almost finished first sock" you ask. Well, I am a perfectionist, especially in the self-striping sock arena. They joke about it at knit night. Not only do I need my socks to match perfectly... apparently I have a thing about having a tiny bit of a new stripe showing up on the toe. This almost happened on my Geographer socks, but there was more than one row of the hot pink on the toe, so I let it go. But just one tiny row of orange on a sea of purple? No thank-you!

I got halfway through grafting the first sock before deciding that I was going to knit the second sock to see if the orange showed up in the exact same spot. "What if the orange shows up in the exact same spot and matches perfectly?" you wonder. Good question. I don't care if it matches perfectly. It is still the same orange problem and I'm going to remove it one way or another.

In other knitting news, I've completely abandoned Mum's cowl for now (sorry Mum) in favor of working on a wedding gift and baby shower gift. But in between that, it's all about these socks.

White Rice Is Exciting

Hello friends! The last two and a half weeks have been quite a challenge. The special diet I was put on left me completely exhausted. This week I was told that I am allowed to start reintroducing things to my diet, but I'm being careful and adding only one new thing a day. (As a side note, you know your diet is strict when the idea of plain white rice fills you with joy.) There are more doctor visits to be had, but I'm just celebrating the little things as they come... you know, when I'm not stressing out about all the things I haven't gotten around to.

One of the things I have managed to get around to is finishing up the two baby Giraffe Hat samples. They came out cute! They now live at Green Planet Yarn, which is where you can find kits for these hats.

I also finished my Geographer Socks. They only took me... three months. There was a time I could get a pair of socks out in 8-10 days. Actually, I'm not sure how people can get socks done so quick. Either they knit faster, or, more likely, they have smaller feet than me.

I'm so happy with how these came out: matching and my size

With the Geographer socks finished, I got to go into my stash and pick out my next pair of socks. Out came Stray Cat Socks yarn in the Jaffa color way. My feeling on socks is the louder the better. If I can still hear you when you talk to me, my socks aren't loud enough.

Confession: I just went to Stray Cat's page so I could give you all the link. I'm really tempted by the Lilah color way. So very tempted. I'm going to be good because I'm knitting so slowly and clearly don't need more yarn. But if I needed more yarn, it would be that ball.

Since the Jaffa socks were the only thing on the needles, I decided it was high time to cast on another Equatorial Nights. It should have been for Mum's birthday last month. You can see how far I got on that. It might be awhile before it is done, but at least it has been started.

That's all the current knitting, but not all the current work being done. I've got a shawl pattern to put out this week. If things go well, it will be out tomorrow, if not, Friday instead. So me and my celery juice will be working on that for the next few hours.

Disclaimer: I hate celery and am torturing myself with doctor prescribed healthy things in an effort to never have to go on this terrible diet ever again. Also, I've decided to never drink another straight celery juice after this one. It is salty and weird.

Fantastic Yarn Day

Last Thursday was a really, really, really good yarn day. Two different packages full of yarn showed up. And since they were sent by two different methods, they showed up at different times. I got to be excited twice in one day. Although I didn't open them right away. (With good reason I assure you.)

And that reason was because I went down to the Holland Road Yarn Co on Willis St. in Wellington and taught a class on starting the Southern Skies. Well, of course I forgot to take a picture of everyone. But I did get a picture of Jenn's start on her Southern Skies.

Now, being at the Holland Road Yarn Co, it's hard not to leave without some yarn. I'd been there earlier in my trip, so I thought I was safe. Not so. They had restocked their Mythral.... and they had the Rata color way that I had been unsuccessful in procuring the last time I'd been in New Zealand. I hemmed, I hawed, I bought.

But with only 8 balls (I had bought all they had in stock) I wasn't sure I'd be able to make the sweater I wanted. After talking to Wei Siew about what my options might be, she dove into her stash and came out with 5 more balls... in the same dye lot. She asked how many I needed, but I honestly couldn't answer her because my jaw had dropped. Too bad there isn't a picture of it. She said I could take all of them after I was unable to scoop my jaw back up off of the floor. She also gave me a project bag. I suppose stuffing one's half knit sock into one's pocket guarantees sympathy from another knitter.

So after all that, I did finally open my yarn packages. I ordered 5 skeins of Anna Gratton's 4ply Pure Wool in Natural White for a super secret project. Poor Wei Siew has had to listen to me prattle on about what they will grow up to be.

And after knitting part of a sock in the Stray Cat Sock that Wei Siew treated me to, I went ahead and bought myself two more balls in the Jaffa and Silver Star color ways.

So if we knitters are to learn any lesson in all of this, it is that if you are far away from your yarn stash, you will start building a new one.