• Felled by the Flu
• 5

I have been felled by the flu.  I have spent the last two days in bed taking strenuous naps and accomplishing precisely nothing useful.  Today I felt human enough to stand up but still far from functional.  I tried to read (I’m a grad student, reading is my day job) but retained absolutely no information from what I read.  I tried to knit but, horror of horrors, knitting was too hard.  My next thought was cleaning (when I’m sick I always get twitchy and want to clean things) but walking around leaves me wheezy and sweaty right now, so that’s out too.  I stumbled upon a happy medium.  I would organize the stash.

Now I really only knit socks or the occasional sockish sort of thing made from sockish sorts of yarn (mitts, booties, and the like).  That means I generally only buy yarn in sock quantities, making storage fairly easy in theory.  Somehow the theory hadn’t quite worked out and the yarn was infiltrating the rest of the house.  So I dragged out all the sock yarn (including the stuff in that drawer over there, and that one little bag in the closet, and maybe basket under the table, and a few other places) and dumped it on my chair.  I arranged it in a loose rainbow (cold medicine made that especially fun) and stuffed my card catalog full of it.  (I got mine from my university archivist, if you want one I can only suggest haunting old libraries and stalking craigslist.)

I have decreed that all my sock yarn (except the stuff currently on the needles) must fit in the card catalog.  It holds enough yarn for about 45 pairs of socks, which is more than I can knit in a year.  That should be plenty to have on hand at any given time, right?  Especially if you count the oh…um…7 partial pairs I have on the needles at the moment?  It also seems somehow pleasantly tidy and organized.  Perhaps most importantly, I feel as though I’ve accomplished something and have therefore earned another nap, which I will be taking now.

• Winner!
• 0

And the winner is…Steph, with comment 52!  I’ll be emailing you later today to arrange to send you your goodies.  Thanks to everyone who entered, and thanks for all the nice comments about the socks.  I’ll be placing an order for more of the Three Irish Girls yarn some time next week, and it’s great to know what colors you all prefer.

The socks with Dicentra’s yarn are making their way through the testing process and should be out in early November.  I’ve got another pair written up and about to go out for testing, and a third pair on the needles.  At least one (and maybe both) of those should be out towards the end of November.  I’ll try to have yarn to give away for those too.

• Calcareous
• 58

Calcareous is live, click here if you’d like to make yourself a pair, or to find out what I meant by yesterday’s crack about my misspent youth.

I also have the distinct pleasure of announcing that Sharon at Three Irish Girls has graciously agreed to donate a skein of the gorgeous Adorn Sock yarn I used to make these socks to one lucky reader!

Now lately, I’ve had the marvelous experience of being contacted by several talented yarn dyers asking me to design patterns for them.  This has been (and continues to be) great fun, but that’s not what happened here.  Here, I saw the Three Irish Girls yarn at Sock Summit, fell madly in love, and simply had to have it.  There was no other choice, it had to be mine.  I got it home, and turned it into socks as quickly as possible.  Calcareous is the result.

Once they were finished, I gathered up my courage, showed a picture of them to Sharon, and asked if maybe just maybe she’d be willing to donate a skein of the yarn to the blog.  She said yes, so now I get to share the fun of this yarn with one of you!

So here’s the plan.  I’m hooked and will have to knit with this yarn again.  The only difficulty is picking a colorway.  So, if you want to be entered for a chance to win the yarn, go to Three Irish Girls, look at the lovely colors, and leave a post here telling me which one I should knit with next.  I’ll leave the comments open till about noon eastern time, on Friday, October 23.  Later on Friday, I’ll randomly pick a winner from the comments and email that person with more information.

EDIT:  Don’t forget that you need to mention one of Three Irish Girl’s colorways to qualify for the drawing…Some of the comments haven’t, and I thought I’d mention it again to be sure!

ETA:  Closing comments now, will come back later to post the winner!

• Criminal Underworld
• 5

My newest pattern, and a brief account of my youthful descent into the criminal underworld, will be appearing tomorrow or the next day.  In the meantime, I can show you a picture of the finished socks, and tell you that their name is Calcareous.

The socks I showed you last time are off to the testers and should be coming out in a few weeks.  On an administrative note, the third and final part of Crenellation has been posted over on Ravelry.  All three parts of the pattern will remain freely available until at least the end of November.  After that, they will likely disappear to be combined into one finalized pattern with pictures and some extra notes and possible modifications that have come to light during the knit along. If your life will be incomplete without the free version of the pattern, go get it between now and the end of November.

Some time in the next few weeks I’ll be putting out a call for testers for three pairs of super secret socks…socks so secret I can’t even publicly post a picture of them.  If anyone out there would be interested in doing some stealth testing for me in November and December, drop me a line and let me know.  I’ll be compiling a list of folks brave enough to take on clandestine projects (cloak and dagger optional)!

• Almost Sunny
• 1

You’ll note I said almost.  It’s been raining every day, and we still haven’t had a day that would qualify as actually sunny.  Despite these meteorological impediments, I still managed to get outside, sock and camera in hand, and get a picture of the newest socks.  In addition to being cloudy and rainy, it is also perilously close to cold.  We haven’t turned on the heat yet, and it was 48 degrees in the house this morning.  I feel I deserve some sort of  medal for hiking up my pants outside to get the shot.  Ah the perils faced by knitters.

But I digress, you’re not here for my goosebumps, you’re here for the socks, and here they are.  These are a lovely frilly feminine confection with a wavy scalloped top and a deceptively simple lace pattern.  I’m putting them up for testers over on Ravelry now, and hope to have the pattern out in about 2 weeks.  Head on over if you want to test.