Socks That Rock

The LYS where I work is one of a few brick-and-mortar stores that carry yarns by Blue Moon Fiber Arts, including Socks that Rock. I had never tried StR before we brought it in, but many of my coworkers had, and I knew from Ravelry and the podcasts I follow that it has a big fan base.

I tend to be in the "sock yarn should have nylon" camp, so I was a little wary of StR's 100% superwash merino content, but my coworkers assured everyone with similar doubts that this yarn wears very well thanks to how tightly it's plied. So I bought a skein to try, and got around to knitting it this winter in between Christmas knitting.

I made Burning Rings of Fire by Kirsten Kapur, and it shows off the yarn beautifully (the colorway is Beach Glass). StR feels different than other sock yarns I've used - more dense and springy and almost rope-y - but I liked working with it and the finished socks feel very nice. They wear well, and they wash really well.

Frosty

Currier & Ives

So I bought some more. As you do. I'm intending this to be my winter sock knitting for next year, since I have a lot of other sock yarn to try in the meantime... but my LYS keeps bringing in more and more colorways from Blue Moon and I'm pretty sure that this will not be the extent of my StR stash.

WIP Wednesday: Many Seasons Mini Skein scarf

Earlier this year, I joined my first yarn club: GnomeAcres' Many Seasons Mini Skein Club. I am a fan of GnomeAcres yarn and of tiny things, so I have really enjoyed getting a bundle of cute little skeins every few months.

My stash anxiety won't let me just hide new yarn in a bin to marinate - I ponder what to make with it until I have a project planned out, even if I'm not going to start for months. Almost as soon as I signed up for the mini skein club, I decided I would make a Mini Mania Scarf. My first club shipment came and I happily got started and then... I wasn't as happy any more.

After long-tail casting-on a billion stitches (using both ends of the skein to avoid real misery, but still not very fun), I got a few rows in and decided that the needle I was using was too big, and the linen stitch wasn't suiting the yarn as well as I wanted. Disappointed, I ripped it all out and hid my spring mini skeins away, and when my summer shipment came I wasn't sure what to do with it (for me, this is unsettling).

As it's started to feel more like fall, I decided to give the mini skein scarf another try. This time I used a crochet cast-on and a smaller needle, added a black border to the edge of the scarf, and I'm doing four rows of each colorway so that each one stands out a little more. And now I like it!

It looks a little crazy, but it's really fun to have a project where I have very little control over the colors and don't know yet how it will look when it's finished.

And just in time for the cooler weather and the arrival of pumpkin-flavored everything, the fall mini skein shipment arrived:

I'm looking forward to adding them to my scarf!

Chicago

I recently spent the weekend in Chicago and wanted to share some of my photos from the trip. It was my first time visiting the city, and I hope it will be the first of several visits, because I liked it and there was a lot that I didn't get the chance to see. (And the food was so good. I want to go back and eat all the food.) I did do my essentials, though: art museum, dinosaur fossils and/or an aquarium, donuts, and yarn.

The Art Institute of Chicago has been on my list of museums to visit since my high school art history classes, and it didn't disappoint. I loved seeing Seurat's Sunday on La Grande Jatte in person - the experience of seeing a famous painting in real life is exciting, but it's even better when the painting is not just iconic but a personal favorite.

We also visited The Field Museum and saw Sue the T-Rex and her dino friends. Then the next day, we went to Shedd Aquarium, which is a great aquarium and they have belugas! One of my favorite animals! Even better, they have a baby beluga. I don't think I've ever seen a baby in real life. So cute! I really need to get around to making PlanetJune's beluga pattern that's been languishing forever in my queue.

For my donut trip, I chose Firecakes, where I had the most perfect chocolate glazed donut I've ever seen (sadly, no pictures, I ate it too quickly). For my yarn store, I went to Loopy Yarns in the South Loop. They had a nice selection, and I picked up a skein of Miss Babs Yummy sock yarn in the Swan Princess colorway, which is a dark purple with blue-gray-greens in it. So pretty:

Definitely a good trip! Chicago is only about an hour away from here by plane, so it's a nice long-weekend destination, and I hope I can go back soon.

Wind it up

Recently I've been in one of those moods where I feel like I need to pause and get organized before I can accomplish anything. I kind of want to knit, or crochet, or work on my photo albums, but then I get aggravated because I'm trying to work from a tangled skein or find just the right scrap of paper in the middle of a messy heap. For my photo album supplies, I recently ordered some paper organizers that were a little pricey, but hopefully will make my life easier. And for my yarn:

Yesterday, all I wanted to do was tidy up my leftover odds and ends. Most of these were in hand-wound balls already, but I decided they would be easier to use if I rewound them as center-pull balls. Plus, it's a bit better for the yarn, since it's not under as much tension that way. I found this tutorial, and spent my afternoon and evening winding yarn around a toilet paper tube. And now I feel much better about everything.

The real inspiration for this exercise was that I want to start some new projects, and none of the yarn for them is wound yet. I don't feel ready yet to invest in a swift and ball winder, and I wanted to try out hand-wound center-pull skeins, so I practiced first... on everything. Now I want to actually start those projects, but the yarn still isn't wound, and I'm a little tired of winding at this point. Oops.

Pittsburgh Knit & Crochet Festival

On Saturday, I went to my first-ever yarn event, the Pittsburgh Knit and Crochet Festival. And... I'm already excited for next year's! Since this was my first time going to something like this, I mostly just visited the market. I'd like to take classes next time (the ones that sounded interesting to me were already full when I registered this year) and maybe spend more time just hanging out. In addition to doing some shopping, I did get to meet Stacey of FreshStitches and Emily of the Whatcha Swatchin podcast, so that was fun. And of course, seeing so much beautiful yarn in one place, both for sale and made into things that the attendees were wearing, was a great reason in itself to go.

SpaceCadet Creations Lucina in Happy Happy Sunshine

Speaking of beautiful yarn... I did some stash enhancement at the market, of course. I had some Christmas cash I was  still hanging on to, so I took that to be my spending limit/goal. I knew I definitely wanted some SpaceCadet Creations yarn, so I went to that booth right away. I've been attracted to yellowy-pink yarn lately (maybe I'm ready for spring) so this is perfect. Plus, sparkles!

Kia Ora Kiwi Fingering

Then I found some Zealana yarn being sold by Susan's Fiber Shop. I haven't encountered this yarn before but the Kia Ora line has possum fiber in it! I picked up a couple balls of Kiwi Fingering which are very light and soft. I think it might make good mitts.

Ball and Skein Glissade in Elderberry

I also visited Ball and Skein's booth. They have so many beautiful colors of yarn that it took me several visits and a long internal debate to decide on the skein I wanted. I saw a lot of other people doing the same thing as me, standing there with two or three different colors and trying to pick between them. In the end, I got a skein of their Glissade yarn (a fingering weight 50% silk, 50% merino blend) in Elderberry. I was trying to avoid getting more purple since I always gravitate to purple, but this is such a beautiful color that I had to have it.

I also found a few non-yarn things that I needed. First, these hand-made buttons by Melissa Jean. No idea what I'll do with them, but they're pretty just to look at even if I never come up with a project.

And, a pair of earrings made from knitting needles by Sassafras Creations. This is the kind of upcycled jewelry I like. If you don't know that it's made from recycled knitting needles, then it just looks like interesting beads, but if you do know its story, then it's something extra to enjoy about them.

I'm really glad I was able to go to the festival, and as I said, I'm already looking forward to the next one. And maybe I'll get to go to another festival before then - I'd like to go to some of the bigger ones soon!

Ravelry saved searches

It's almost a cliche for knitters and crocheters to rave about all the wonderful ways Ravelry has improved their lives, isn't it? And yet I can't help myself. Here's another thing about Ravelry that I love: saved searches.

I think Ravelry's "advanced search" feature is awe-inspiring. There are over 300,000 knitting and crochet patterns on there, but with the advanced search filters, you can find exactly what you're looking for. The only problem is that it can be hard to replicate a search later, if you used several different filters and can't remember which combinations produced the results you wanted. Fortunately, you can save your searches, which preserves all the parameters you chose. I like using this feature for my ongoing stash-busting quest.

Ravelry's advanced search page

For example, this is my saved search for that purple worsted acrylic that I bought way too many skeins of. I've still got one skein left and I'd like to use it up! So first of all, I selected "worsted" from the Weight filter. I'd rather not spend more money on a stash-busting project, so I picked "free" from the Availability filter. And, it's hard to get inspired by a pattern with no photo, so I selected "yes" from the Has photo filter.

Excluding colorwork from my search results

Another thing I don't want to deal with when I'm trying to use up a skein is colorwork. Besides the fact that I haven't done any colorwork and am scared of it, I don't want to go buy new yarn just to use up old yarn (and I don't think I have any colors in my stash that would work with this particular one). So, I went to the Attributes filter, opened up the Colorwork sub-filter, and selected every type of colorwork listed there. Then I told the filter to exclude all of these, so (ideally) patterns with colorwork won't show up in my results.

Yardage filter

Finally, I want to find patterns that will use up as much of my skein as possible, without calling for more yarn than I have. Since I went on my project-weighing spree, I know that I have about 273 yards left of this purple yarn. You can see that the Yardage filter has quite a few options, but a project that uses "0-150 yards" will leave me with leftovers, and "150-300 yards" could run over my maximum yardage.

Entering a custom range in the Yardage filter

Solution: I can enter my own range! I put in 250 to 270 yards, to be on the safe side. Now I don't have to pick through my results looking for patterns with an ideal yardage.

Saving my search

The last step is to save my search, since right now I'm just dreaming about future projects and not ready to commit. I like to come back to my saved searches every so often and check out which patterns are new or popular (which you can do by selecting different sort options from the drop-down menu by the search bar). I just give my search a name that I'll remember, and as Ravelry helpfully points out, that search is then available for me to look at again by clicking on the magnifying glass tab at the top of the page.

By the way, Ravelry has lots of help pages and guided tips, which are posted on the right side of the main Ravelry page. That's definitely where to go if you want to know more about searching, or any of the other life-changing conveniences that Ravelry offers.

Enabling

We're going to Japan next month (!), and as soon as we booked the trip I decided I was going on a yarn diet, so that I could save my money to buy yarn, among other things, while we're there.

But then there was that Naruto yarn from GnomeAcres that I needed to have immediately, because who knew how much of it she would make and how often it would be available. And then there was a present I needed to start working on, and I had to buy some yarn for that. And now my local yarn store is having its pre-inventory sale, and what was I supposed to do, just not go?

I have been staring at their shelves of madelinetosh every time I've gone in the store since early this summer. Really, it was for my own well-being, to end the torment of wanting to have the yarn but knowing I shouldn't really spend the money. (Full disclosure, I used a gift card that still had some money on it, so really it was about time to buy this yarn.)

So, like the very few, very brief food diets I've attempted in my life, it seems that deciding I'm "on a diet" does nothing other than trigger this desperate urge to gobble up everything I'm not supposed to have before I remember that I'm not supposed to have it.

But now, really, I'm not getting anything until we're back from Japan.

Unless there's another sale somewhere. Or I decide I need some Christmas-y GnomeAcres mini-skeins.