Swap & Meet

It's hard to describe how Ravelry has changed the face of knitting. The community of knitters that it brings together is immense. The ability to search for patterns or problems or people who can solve your problems. Pretty much everything you need in one place. It has helped me more than once.

These past few weeks brought along with it a new Ravelry-related experience. A yarn swap. This lady had connected with J. over her skirt, and she was wondering where she could find a kit to make one. J. suggested she get in touch with me as I had an unused kit just hanging around. So I got a nice little message on Ravelry about my kit and would I be willing to trade it for something else. I'm usually leery about these sorts of things (note: loathing of the general public).

Now, there's nothing wrong with the yarn or the skirt. What's wrong is that my legs are ridiculously long. No, not in a super-model type way (I'm not quite skinny enough for that), just plain long. When you're 6'2" tall that's just the way it is. So, upon further reflection, I knew there was no way there would be enough yarn to make a decent skirt - or at least a skirt that would be decent. This yarn, therefore, has been sitting there, on my shelf waiting. Waiting for someone or something. And then along came Dehbi.

We messaged back and forth with some trade options, and I finally just left it up to her. I told her the big thing to me would be to get something that I couldn't get here. Something that was different.

A couple weeks later this arrived.

Hand-dyed wool from Chile (it's more blue than grey). Dehbi bought it there on a trip and just never used it.

Wow. I'm a lucky, lucky girl. Now I just have to consider my options. I'm currently leaning towards this.

Anyone else have any great ideas for about 850 yards of fingering weight hand-dyed from the south of Chile??

Stripes!!

I decided to finally use my hand-dyed. J. and I had dyed some yarn a while ago and I was waiting for a lull in the knitting queue to use it. As I'm anxiously awaiting the 2nd STR shipment, I thought I'd do some quick socks for Punky. He saw the yarn and requested it. I wouldn't say that orange is his favorite color (it varies, somedays green and somedays blue. NEVER pink or purple though, those are, according to him "gurlz colorz"). But he saw this yarn and asked for some socks.

So I cast on some late last week and finished the first sock on Saturday.

Look at the stripe action I got going. The yarn is primarily neonic orange, with little runs of light brown and spots of white (basically to break up the neon and not give yourself a headache).

Here's a closer look at the leg. The tone is a little off in this picture, but you can actually see how nicely distributed the colors are, with the small runs of brown.

And finally the heel. Again, good color distribution to break up the orange.

Punky was so excited about the socks, he insisted on wearing the one finished sock to the birthday party he was going to. However, after taking a sharp corner at home whilst running on the laminate, he thought better of it. Good thing. His dad was having a heart attack about him going out into the world with different colored socks on. Seriously, if that's the worst thing he leaves the house in, I'm not too concerned.

Ya-da Ya-da Blah Blah Blah

I was going to blog today about the issues I'm having with my newest project (all sizing and gauge related) and then describe in grand detail my newest sock creation (a Baad Medicine Original - details coming soon)....

....but I just wasn't feeling it. Sorry - I don't have it in me today. I think it's related to 2 very early mornings, too many fevers in my house and too little coffee.

So, instead I leave you with this - my homage to 1970s fast food decor.

My goal for tonight - roll it into a ball.