Woolgirl Oz Sock Club - Yellow Brick Road

My Woolgirl Oz Club kit arrived last week, this time with a Yellow Brick Road theme.  Fortunately it arrived earlier than usual this time and that means it was delivered before the Memorial Day holiday weekend.

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

The kit contents:

This time there are just larger bags, which is great for me -- a reusable Wizard of Oz shopping tote and a smaller reversible yellow brick road tote with chocolate brown handles and interior.  There's another small metal tin, a "Follow the Yellow Brick Road" pen, and three sticky note pads, including one to help announce a future optional kit for the Wicked Witch of the West with the phrase "Are you a good witch or a bad witch?".  The adorable picture in the lower right is actually a stack of cute note cards and matching envelopes.

The delicious yarn:

It's Yarn Daze Yucatan, a wonderfully soft and squishy DK weight in a blend of Merino and Cashmere; so soft!  And fortunately the yarn is a nice golden yellow that nicely matches expectations for the Yellow Brick Road, so no repeats of the Ruby Slippers kit disappointment.

I am personally entertained at how excited Tin Man looks about the yarn and pattern in this photo:

The pattern has a plain cuff and leg with a road running across the top of the foot from the heel gusset pick-ups to the toe.  At first glance I'm a little concerned about the fit -- a plain stockinette leg with 66 stitches instead of the usual 64 for fingering weight with this heavier yarn make it seem like it might be baggy around the leg and ankles.  It looks like a straight forward pattern otherwise, but because of the size concerns I might not cast on for these until I have time to try them on often as I'm working to fuss with the fit and adjust that part of the pattern, if necessary.

It's a lovely kit with temptingly soft yarn, so I'm looking forward to knitting some amazingly cushy socks!

The Electric Devons

I did it -- I finished my first Wollmeise socks and my last socks of the Sock Innovation Knit-Along with a bit of the month to spare.

Now I didn't do spectacularly well with the knit-along -- I only completed 3 of the 15 socks patterns -- but I didn't find the group until August last year and then wasn't willing to put my other knitting on hold to keep up with it (there were Christmas gifts in the works after all).  Then the moderators of the group decided to start doubling up the patterns to do 2 patterns a month and there was no way I would have kept up with every pattern anyway.  So I haven't knit them all, but I wanted to make sure I finished one of the last 2 patterns before it was over:

Pattern: Devon by Cookie A.
Yarn: Wollmeise Sockenwolle 80/20 Twin - Lavendel (We're Different)
Needles: US 1½ - 2.5 mm Addi Turbo Lace
Completed:  May 22, 2010

I'm really pleased with them and they fit beautifully, even though our summer-like weather means I haven't done anything more than simply try them on yet.  The Wollmeise yarn is really an amazingly bright purple and you certainly can't beat the yardage -- even after a longish pair of socks I have about 200 yards left!  I did find that the construction of the Wollmeise yarn made it more splitty than yarns like BMFA Socks That Rock, but it wasn't a major problem for this pattern at least.

Unfortunately, I think the sock success means that my Nonpareil sweater won't be done this month.  I haven't completely given up hope yet and I've been working on it with renewed determination, but the signs (and the amount of seaming needed) aren't good.  Who knew it could take so long to knit things like a sweater collar piece?

Sock Innovation with Wollmeise

I've been moving along with my Devon socks (from the Sock Innovation book) and finally have some photos to prove it.  I finished the first sock and I'm more than halfway through the leg of the second.  Since there's plenty of yardage in a Wollmeise skein (about 510 yards!!) and I rarely come close to running out of yarn for socks for myself anyway, I knit these according to the pattern with 4 repeats which results in a somewhat longer leg.   

But, since it's spring and there's plenty of rain moving through, these photos were taken inside and don't really do justice to the actual color.  Maybe once both socks are finished I'll be able to get some better photos of them with natural light.

In the meantime I'm in pretty good shape to get them finished and posted to the knit-along before the end of the month, but I'm hoping to work in some time for finishing my sweater, too, so there is the possibility of getting distracted.  I'm looking forward to having them finished and being able to wear them to see what the famous Wollmeise feels like after some wear, though.

Knitting the Stitches

I've been amassing too much stash and with a new year comes a new Stitches Midwest and more yarn temptation.  We haven't booked anything or scheduled any classes yet, but at least Xandermommy and I are still planning to attend.

Most of my Stitches Midwest 2009 stash

But months ago, when we started talking about it again, I made the rule that I wasn't allowed to go back this year unless I knit some of the yarn I bought there last year.  I did start my Nonpariel sweater back in February and made a lot of good progress on it, but it's been stalled for a few weeks since it reached the seaming stage.  I am trying to make myself finish it by setting a goal for the end of the month, though.

In the meantime, I felt the need for a simpler project that was easier to travel with and had an easily memorized pattern.  Since my stash is almost entirely sock yarn, socks were an obvious answer.

Miss Babs Yummy in Wisteria and Yummy Toes in Bruin

Hoodie Revisited

I think it was sometime in February that my sister admitted that my nephew would likely never wear the sweater I knit him because with the tight fit over his head they were afraid they wouldn't be able to get it back off of him.  Since the sweater itself was sized more in the hopes of fitting him sometime between now and September and it was just the neck that seemed too small for him, I took it back with plans to cut the neck and rip out some stitches and try to get some more space without unraveling it completely.  I completed the surgery in the end of February, but it wasn't until this weekend that we saw them again and had a chance to see if it would ever be wearable or if he'd already outgrown the rest of it.

I ended up removing most of what looked like the colorful insert behind the v-neck by cutting a stitch at the center of the garter stitch edge and carefully unraveling just that color until I hit a point where I wasn't sure I could go any further without a disaster.  I wove in the extra ends that were produced and I'm hoping the applied i-cord will help stabilize the portion of the neck that wasn't part of the neck before.

And the result is.... wearable!  My sister was able to get it on him with very little fuss and he was smiling as soon as he was wearing it and grabbed one of the cuffs and started sucking on it right away again!  The hood is more decorative as it's still small for his 95th percentile noggin, but I'm not sure how much he would put up with wearing a hood anyway.  The body and sleeves obviously aren't so baggy like they were at 4 months old, but they didn't seem too snug yet.  So I'm hoping he'll be able to get at least a little bit of wear out of it before he outgrows it now.  And since I don't have any pictures of him trying it on I'll have to try for pictures if he does wear it again when we see them next.

Then, since I didn't use up much of the variegated skein for the sweater and he enjoyed sucking on his sleeves so much, I decided to use the rest of the yarn for a fun toy for him.  And so the Star That Rocks was born.

In Progress

Lightly stuffed w/toy inside for noise

I gave it to him this weekend and he seemed to enjoy playing with it and tasting it.  It's not stuffed very tightly so it's nice and soft and the stuffing muffles the bell inside so it's not very loud.  And later I heard that it worked well as a pillow while he was sleeping for the car ride home.  Awww!