So proud.

I just checked out ludistitch and I am now officially impressed with ludistitcher's taste in purses. I mean project bags. That happen to be awesome purses. If you chose to use said bag as a purse. I'm just sayin'.

As for me, my knitting has suffered due to the following:
1. Sock Wars took it out of me
2. It's really hot out, so I enjoy non-wool related activities

I think I am ready to get back into it. A lazy few weeks has made my hands a little twitchy. I have just been checking the same blogs over and over again. I guess I have had enough of non-knitting time.

Consider me back in the game. As for WIP, I have ludistitcher's socks and maui wauis. It's on.

Understanding the Namaste Bag Love

There's not much new on the knitting front for me to report since all of my recent knitting time has gone towards a mystery project that I'm not ready to blog about yet. But, on a topic near to Sariebeth's heart, I can add an update about a knitting accessory purchase - my new Namaste Newport bag. (insert Vanna White gesture here)

Now I'm not much of a fashionista and I generally don't spend much on purses or handbags, so when I saw people mentioning their favorite knitting bags on Ravelry and the prices mentioned were $100 or more it just wasn't likely that I was going to buy one anytime soon. Then Woolgirl had a sale on Namaste bags and this cute little Newport bag was marked down to $45 and I couldn't resist. I had the perfect excuse to use it as my carry-on bag for our vacation to Maui and I admit that I totally love it!



It's very simple - mostly just an open bag with magnetic closures at the top - but the large central divider sewn in as a full-sized zipper compartment makes it so much nicer to keep things organized. For traveling, I kept my knitting on one side and travel items on the other with my wallet secured in the zippered divider. Now that I'm home I tend to keep one project on each side with my circular needles stored in the center divider. When it ventures out of the house I either carry it along just as a knitting bag or toss my wallet and cell phone in and call it a large purse for the day.


Now I totally understand why this brand of bags has such a following. I love that it looks stylish enough that I can take it with me wherever and it just looks like I'm taking part in the giant purse fad rather than having it scream "Back away, geeky crafter type coming through!" And rather than being made in such a way that it's so specific to knitting that it has no other uses, it really is just a flexible, well organized tote.

So there you go, I was sucked in by yet another knitting-related purchase, but I predict it's going to get a lot of use for a lot of different purposes before I'm done with it. In the meantime, my knitting projects are traveling in luxury, which will hopefully appease them and make them eager to cooperate!

Crazy Fast Rainbows

As soon as I got my Woolgirl Oz Sock Club kit for May - Over the Rainbow - I wanted to start knitting with the yarn. I opted for sport weight when given the choice, after much debate, and I'm really glad I did. (spoiler warnings/images removed 2-Jul-2009)

Sport weight in this yarn, Zen String's Lotus Toes Sport, felt very similar to much of the fingering weight I've used before and not as heavy as I had expected. While I would have been happy to try the finer fingering weight, I'm happy with my choice because the sport weight yarn striped in a fun way. Not entirely unexpected for a rainbow theme, but definitely not what was shown in the pictures for the pattern that were presumably taken of socks knit in the fingering weight. (This is where I realize that I forgot to take pictures of the pattern, so you'll just have to believe me on this unless I come back to edit this post with some later.)

The included pattern was simple and easy to memorize and apparently I've been corrupted by my Sock Wars experience because I went a bit crazy and finished these in just 6 days! I did stick with a plain foot rather than following the pattern down to the toes, but because it included a garter stitch heel and toe I decided to include a "princess foot" of purled stitches on the bottom for both the visual interest and to see if it would be softer. I haven't had a chance to wear them enough to know how different the foot feels yet, but I love how it looks with these.

So there you go, my first sock club kit and I knit like the wind (for me anyway) and finished it early. No more club shipments on the schedule for me until July so I have some time to catch up on other projects, including all the outdoor work that summer brings.

Woolgirl Oz Sock Club - Over the Rainbow

My first ever sock club kit has arrived! I managed to avoid looking at any spoilers on Ravelry before I picked it up from the Post Office yesterday so that I could have fun opening it like a little gift. Since I don't want to ruin it for anyone else, all of the spoilers are below this paragraph.

************ Spoilers from this point on! ************

So here it is with all of its little extras:

It included a new measuring tape and a very tiny rainbow stitch marker. The brown Dorothy fabric is a project bag and the Oz book is a nice journal with an attached ribbon bookmark and elastic to keep it neatly closed.

I also have a feeling that Xandermommy might be jealous of this yummy rainbow yarn!

I did cast on to do 2 at a time on 2 circulars last night, which I'm getting a bit better at, but I didn't make enough progress for any photos of the knitting yet. Sock pictures will have to follow later. Now to see if I can keep up with all of these projects I've started!!

Intro to Knitting on a Plane

While Maui is an awesome place for a vacation, it requires a lot of travel time to get there from here, so it seemed like a perfect time to try out some knitting on a plane. (And it turns out that pictures taken on a moving plane tend to come out a bit blurry.)

I had just finished my Insidious Death Socks and Xandermommy's Blue Flame Waffle Socks, so I decided to cast on some new socks just for vacation travel. I was looking forward to trying out the Leyburn socks and thought they might help break up the colors in my yarn of choice, some sport weight Merino Superwash from Family Pendragon. Since these were my first toe-up socks I decided to work the first cast-on at home the day before we left. I'm so very thankful that I did because it turns out I can't crochet to save my life!! The recommended provisional cast-on was a crochet method and despite the help of several online video tutorials and two different sizes of crochet hooks I never got more than 2 loops on the hook before dropping the whole mess. After more than an hour of struggling I finally switched to an entirely different provisional cast on (hopefully I'll find the link to the video again soon and edit to link it here) that worked like the familiar long tail cast on and I was off and knitting short rows with no further problems. Whew!

So I boarded the first plane with the beginnings of a sock toe and by the time we landed in Maui I had turned the first heel. I didn't knit continuously on the flights since I was trying to get some sleep in anticipation of the 6-hour time change, too. And then that was pretty much it for knitting. After all, when this is just a few feet from your condo:

you find a lot of other things to do and spend a lot of time outside!

The overnight flights and the time change also meant that I slept for the majority of the flights home, too. So my Maui Fire Dancer Socks found their inspiration with anticipation of Maui but will be worked mostly on the mainland. And that works out perfectly for me.

Death by Air Raid

Death was nimble, death was quick, death flew from SockGrl’s needle tips!

Actually, my Sock Wars Death (in the Air Raid Socks pattern) came for me a little over a week ago, but I was rewarded with relaxation time in Maui almost immediately afterwards so I didn't really have time or access to an internet connection to write about it again until now.

Clearly these death socks were made by a more proficient knitter than myself because the stitches all look so perfect and even. These were also knit from a wonderfully soft combo of baby alpaca and silk so I'll probably stick to wearing them around the house to avoid wearing them out too quickly in shoes. Ah, warm and soft, squishy socks in the Sock Wars afterlife.

A Quickie...

I recently took my 5 year old, Maya, to my LYS Knitting Off Broadway. She saw several yarns that she wanted me to buy and use right away. How can I resist that request?!? The following is the result of a small part of that day's yarn purchases. It's a scarf that I made out of Lorna's Laces Shepherd Worsted in Sherbet. Maya loves it and it only took a few days of knitting. Cute!