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.

Last FO of 2013

Once my Christmas knitting was done, I chose Crooked Cathedral by Marisa Hernandez as the special project that I would make just for me. I knit it in madelinetosh tosh merino light, in the Jasper colorway, which I'd had sitting in my stash and intended for this shawl since the summer.

This was an enjoyable knit, easy but not brainless. I went with the larger option for the shawl body, since I was hoping to use as much of my two skeins of TML as possible, but just made the normal lace border because I'm not a huge fan of lots and lots of lace. I still have almost one whole skein of the TML left, so in hindsight I might have stuck with the normal shawl body size, too, but I have no complaints.

While I was knitting this pattern, I wondered whether it would be my last FO of 2013, or my first of 2014 - but I finished it on the afternoon of New Year's Eve. As evidence of how busy 2014 has already been for me, I can't blog yet about my first FO of this year, because I haven't found time to get good photos of it yte.