Still Torn

I'm still torn over which white to use with my handspun. I've even gone as far as knitting up a bit of a cuff in each white. On top is Tosh Sock in Filtered Light and on bottom is Koigu in 0000. I'm worried the Filtered Light is too orange. Of course the flip side is that the Koigu might be too plain. Anyone have an opinion now that there are swatches to compare with the handspun?

I'd love to get going on this sock. Decisions, decisions. Until then, the only thing on my needles is Onopordum, which is terrible car knitting. I suppose this pattern isn't great care knitting either, but the idea is to knit the leg in one go, which would make the rest of the sock great car knitting.

Meanwhile I managed to weave in all the ends and block my Drogue. It's a beast of a shawl. I had to fold it in half to block it because I didn't have enough blocking boards.

Just to give some perspective as to how long it is, here is Scooter helping out. 

Which White Is Right

Much knitting has been occurring as of late. Drogue is practically knitting itself. I was making the Captain size, but have come to realize that I will run out of the main color a few rows short of the edging, so I will probably do the Boatswain edging instead.

Onopordum is making great strides too. Although like every other sock I have ever knitted, I had a rip a little out. I'm doing the color work portions on US size 1 needles and the plain bits on US size 0 needles. Guess who forgot to switch to the smaller needles when knitting the heel.

I'm looking into what my next project will be and honestly, I still desire color work socks. I've decided on Sheep May Safely Graze with my handspun Enchanted. The question is, which white do I go with? On the left side is plain white Koigu, which has a slightly cooler tone. On the right is a skein of Tosh Sock in the Filtered Light color way that is a warmer cream with speckles. Since I don't have enough handspun, I'm planning to do the cuff, her, and toe out of the white.

Is Filtered Light too busy for the already busy handspun? Or is the plain white too plain for such large areas of knitting. And before someone suggests to use both, I'd rather use one or the other. Opinions would be greatly appreciated.

Joshua Tree, Salvation Mountain, And Disneyland, Oh My!

Last weekend Connor and I went on a trip to see bits of California I've never seen on our way to the final destination: Disneyland. Originally we were going to go by the coast and stay in Morro Bay. But wouldn't you know it, all the colleges in the area were doing their graduation and there wasn't a hotel available along the entire central coast. All of it. So despite the heat, we decided to go to Joshua Tree instead. We arrived in the evening and saw the sunset, which was much more impressive because a storm had rolled in and we saw the occasional flash of lightning.

The next day we headed further south to Salvation Mountain. On the way we stopped by Bombay beach, which contains ruins of a once vibrant holiday community. The Salton Sea smells just as bad as everyone describes, but it was still quite interesting to walk around. I hadn't realized that the Salton Sea was formed from a leak in irrigation from the Colorado River in the early 1900s. It has no inlet or outlet and over the years has gotten polluted from agricultural runoff in the area.

By the middle of the day we made it to Salvation Mountain. It is a monument built by Leonard Knight out of adobe and is his tribute to God. The scale is amazing. And to think one man built it. There is a "yellow brick road" that you can climb to stand at the top of the monument.

Salvation Mountain is just in front of Slab City, a place that looks like it has come straight out of a Mad Max movie. There is an outdoor art display in "East Jesus", not far from "West Satan". We drove by, but it was quite hot (106F or 41C), so we stayed in the car. We spent the rest of the day driving around the rest of the Salton Sea, including stopping at a border patrol checkpoint (we were pretty darn close to Mexico at this point). We eventually made it to our hotel in Anaheim that was walking distance from Disneyland. At this point I was suffering from a pretty bad cold, but we walked to downtown Disney, had a lovely dinner, and walked back.

The next day was epic. We spent 15 hours at Disneyland, including lunch at my all time favorite restaurant: The Blue Bayou. It was quite crowded for a Monday, but no matter. We got onto each ride we wanted to once. (We also saw someone getting proposed to.) By the end of the day we staggered back and passed out immediately. Not too many pictures were taken because we were having a lot of fun. But near the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, I found this hat and decided that Disney missed out on having a really good extra in their movies.

On our last day, before leaving LA, we stopped by the La Brea tar pits. I'd been there before, but Connor hadn't. I highly recommend going to the Page Museum that is located on the grounds. Connor got to meet a large mammoth.

We then drove up Highland street so Connor could get a glimpse of the Hollywood sign before we drove on to Solvang for an early dinner. It was 10pm by the time we got back home. We filled our four days to the brim and drove over 1000 miles (1600km). By the end, we were quite happy to be back in our own bed again.

Seadragonus and Hypnoskew

Oh glorious day. I've finished not one pair of socks, but two! Here are the Seadragonus socks out of Happy-Go-Knitty's BFL sock in the Forget Me Not color way. I am quite pleased with how these socks came out. It took me a little bit of time to find my rhythm when knitting them. But once I did, they flew off the needles.

Then there is the pair of Skew socks out of White Birch Fiber Arts in the All Glory To The Hypnotoad color way. I will admit that I am obsessive about matching stripes, so I did add one more knit round before sewing up the heel on the second sock so it would match the first. I think they came out pretty great.

All hail

Two Knitters, One Roof

Connor has started his first official project. I thought we'd gotten pretty far in the swatch, so it was time to try out a scarf. We decided on a 2x2 ribbed scarf. To get him going, I handed over two skeins of Rockwell from Jill Draper Makes Stuff in the Pacific color way.

Since we've started the scarf, Connor's been saying things like, "We should knit tonight." And, "One more row."

He's making great progress, too! Maybe when he is done, I'll get to borrow it.

The Mojo Returneth

And the winner is... Onopordum. I agonized over the color possibilities. I knew that I wanted my thistles to have purple flowers and light green leaves. But what to put around it all?

Searching every website imaginable to find a skein of Anzula Squishy in a grey that would match the black I had was a Sisyphean task. Things were too brown or too dark to have good contrast. I eventually determined that I wanted Onyx in Squishy. I also wanted to cast on immediately. So I did what I should have done to begin with: I dug into my stash. And I emerged with Baah! La Jolla in Grape Vine, Anzula Squishy in both Boysenberry and Spruce, and some leftover, now discontinued Miss Babs Windsor Sock in Vergris.

I'm pretty sure I love it. There is good contrast. The thistles look just the way I want. But I keep wondering if the dark green is a good choice. Does it have too much contrast? Or do I just need to knit more?

Of course it is completely unreasonable to have only 1 thing on the needles, especially a rather complicated color work sock. (I've just recently completed my Seadragonus socks and my Skews. Pictures to blogged in a bit.) So I cast on a second thing! This is the beginning of Drogue by Tygerknits. 

I knew that my knitting mojo had waned for quite some time, but I didn't realize how much until I started Drogue. I've regained that knitting compulsion. That feeling where you spend parts of your day dreaming about sitting down and knitting a specific pattern. That is Drogue for me.

Imagiknit And Twin Peaks

I've been wanting to visit Imagiknit in San Francisco for quite some time, but it can be a tough sell to my family. Trips to SF tend to be along the waterfront, not the Castro. I told Connor I hadn't been to the shop or the Castro and he thought we ought to make a trip out.
It was everything I could have wanted and more. So much yarn. So much possibility. After touching all the yarn, Connor gave some valuable feedback that kept me from buying "several options" and sticking to the yarn I actually wanted.

And what does an hour in a yarn shop get you? The three skeins of white Koigu that you meant to buy in the first place.

After Imagiknit,  Connor took me to another place I hadn't been before: Twin Peaks. At least I think we went there...

It was really windy and foggy. We got a good view of our hair flying in our faces. There will be another trip at some point.

Representing with our knits. I'm wearing Beyond The Pines and Connor is wearing a cowl I made for him that has no pattern presently.

I had a lovely day and I'm glad we got to go for a few hours. And I'm excited to plan new things for that white yarn.

Orange And Purple

I'm almost done with my two pairs of socks. I thought I would have been done two weeks ago... but so it goes. I've been eyeing some great stranded color work sock patterns for quite some time and my needles are almost free. Onopordum and Sheep May Safely Graze are the serious contenders at the moment. But I've also been looking at Walking On Dinosaurs, Sock Lover's Socks, Labyrinth, and Hieroglyphic Socks. As I dug around in my stash I learned a rather curious thing. I have a habit of buying orange and purple yarn together. Enough for color work socks. The bottom left four skeins are from Knitsch in Charlemagne and The William. The bottom right skeins are Baah! La Jolla in California Poppy and Grape Vine. And that top ball? Well my love of the orange/purple combo can't be ignored with Stray Cat Socks Self Striping Yarn in the Jaffa color.

What's funny is if you look at all my recent sweaters, they are green, blue, grey, or some combination of. Orange and purple are not my colors.

Top to bottom is the Robin Hoodie, Pente, Grace, and Pomme de Pin. 

I know how this happened though. I have this habit of seeing sock yarn and declaring that "It's for socks!" in order to bypass the practical side of my brain that would say, "But you only wear green/blue/grey." Luckily for me, I do love wearing wild colored socks. The louder they are, the easier it is to drown out the practical side of my brain when shopping for yarn.

Who else has a particular color or color combo they buy, but isn't very practical for the wardrobe? If anyone happens to blog on the topic, please post a comment with a link. I'd love to read about it.