Woolgirl Oz Sock Club - Emerald City

The next kit in my Woolgirl Oz sock club has arrived, this time themed for the Emerald City. It also marks the start of a new Oz kit every month! Most of the year the club is on an every other month basis, but starting with this kit there will be one every month from September (this one was late and shipped in Oct., but was listed as a Sept. kit) through January. I seriously need to learn to knit a lot faster!

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

So here it is all wrapped up like a gift:

And here it is unpacked:

The green corduroy fabric is a zippered bag from Sheila D - a bit small to hold an entire ball/cake of sock yarn, but large enough for the rest of what came with the kit. There's also another nice pen, this time with an appropriate green highlighter on top. The little Emerald City stitch marker is adorably detailed and was obviously a labor of love, and the Emerald City tin is going to be great for keeping track of little knitting accessories.

Although I held out the first night, I was anxious to try the Madelinetosh tosh sock yarn and cast on the next night (although this photo includes progress from a few nights):

I was also looking forward to trying my new Kollage square metal sock needles. I bought a set of US size 1 in anticipation of needing them for one of the Oz kits since some of the fingering weight sock yarn seems to require tiny needles. I already like working with them, but this pattern has been going really slowly for me. I think it's partly the tiny needles and partly the fact that I've acquired so much yarn in my stash and feel like I'm not knitting nearly fast enough.

But I'm trying to avoid burning myself out so I've been working on my first adult-sized sweater, too. It's nice to be able to switch to bigger needles and an easy pattern that doesn't require a lot of concentration on charts. I don't think these socks will be all that complicated, just a long labor of love. Plus, there's the possibility of some fall knits that might steal my attention, too, so we'll see.