Today was seriously an excellent mail-day…

Three packages worth of goodies!

The first package came from The Loopy Ewe.  I managed to get some Yarn Pirate merino/tencel sock yarn.  The color is called “Daisy” and I absolutely love it.  I also ordered a big stack of patterns in preparation for Summer of Socks ‘08.  I got a bunch of Wendy Knits patterns: Twisted Logic, Costa, Alana, and and St. Louis.  I also got the Flambeau by Terry Ross and Lace-agon by Monica Jines.  All those patterns should keep me busy for a while.

The second package contained three new yummy fibers from CJ Kopec Creations.  The red is called “Secrets” and is a blend of merino, colonial and bamboo.  The blue is 100% merino.  The natural chocolate brown is… alpaca.  (*SQUEE*)  I’m excited to spin these up.  I’ve never spun alpaca, nor have I spun anything blended with bamboo.  So this should be fun.  I think the merino will make for pretty sock yarn, and it will match denim jeans really well!

The last package was from Blue Moon Fiber Arts.  I got my very first skein of Socks that Rock yarn, which I’m so excited to knit up.  I got the STR Lightweight in the Pond Scum colorway.

I also ordered one of their sock monkey knitting kits.  It came in a cute package that puts me in mind of a time-capsule!  The two yarn colors in my kit are “Typhoon Tina” and “Harlotty”.  I’d love to start one of these right away, but I have far too many projects on the needles already.  If anyone else is kniting these at the moment, be sure to check out the knit-along going on over at the Yarn Harlot Fans group on Ravelry!

*AHEM*  Guess I have more than enough yarn, roving, and knitting projects in general to keep me busy for a long, long time.  It wasn’t that long ago that I was a beginning knitter and “stash” was a completely foreign concept to me.  Heh, that didn’t last for long…

Do you like free stuff?  Specifically knitting and crochet -related free stuff!?

Then you need to go check out Crochet & Knit Giveaways.

The site is the creation of Marly of YarnThing and Brianna of The Crochet Side.  From their explanation of the site:

That new world, darlings, was a wonderland of goodie bags passed between the hands of fiber-artists, hobbyists and crafters. A world where we gave away extras of things we own, or patterns we created, or stitch markers we fought pesky wire and adornments to make, all so that we could give them away to people we knew–absolutely knew–would appreciate what we have to give.

Crochet & Knit Giveaways is that world.  It’s a great idea: individuals and businesses can promote their products and their websites by giving away the wonderful things they create, and fiber-loving consumers can give those people/businesses their feedback and at the same time have a chance of winning great prizes!  Who doesn’t love that!?

Earlier in the day, I’d resigned myself to the fact that I’d probably not make it in time to see the Yarn Harlot here in Nashville.  I had to work late and I found out at the last minute that you had to have tickets to get a book signed.  But thanks to my wonderful boss (who I already knew was wonderful, but this just adds to the fact), I was able to leave work at 5:30 and made it to Brentwood in time to see Stephanie Pearl-McPhee!

Borders was already full of knitters when I arrived.  I was thrilled to find familiar faces in the crowd — friends from sock club at the Neighborhood Knit Shop!  They even happened to have an extra seat for me in the second row of chairs.  We visited and of course worked on sock knitting.  I don’t think a single person in the crowd didn’t have needles in their hands.  It was great.

At one point, a woman approached me and asked, “Where do I know you from?”  I was startled for a second but then said, “Maybe Ravelry?”  Turns out it was Grandma Barb!  It was so nice to get to meet her.  It was also very weird to get recognized like that.

Stephanie gave a long talk that had everyone laughing nearly to the point of tears.  She’s truly the stand-up comedian of knitting.  (Who knew there could be such a thing?)  She also discussed some really fascinating research relating to how knitting helps relieve stress/trauma and how knitters and Buddhist Monks have super-powerful brains.  I’d love to relate it all here, but clearly I didn’t absorb quite as much of it as I wish I could have retained.  Hopefully she’ll talk about it on her blog, maybe after the tour is over.  It really was interesting.

Here’s a short clip from this evening, for those of you who couldn’t attend:

I also managed to get a ticket so I could have my book signed.

In hindsight, I really hope that I didn’t seem rude … or crazy.

I have this knack for becoming a complete moron when I meet famous people and people whom I admire.  (*ahem* We won’t discuss the time I met Hal Sparks…)

Stephanie was very nice and very patient, taking time to visit with each person in line.  She signed my book of course and posed for a picture.  In the photo, she’s holding my sock-project and I held the sock she’s currently working on.  I thought that was pretty cool of her.

Anyway, Stephanie, if for some crazy reason you stumble up on this blog post, thanks again — thanks for coming to Nashville, thanks for signing my book, thanks for the photo, and thanks for not thinking I was a total fruitcake!

What a crazy, exciting, anxiety-filled day!

This morning kicked off with a Wollmeise sneak up at The Loopy Ewe. Through clues that Sheri had dropped over at the Loopy Groupies Ravelry group, we knew the sneak up had to be yesterday or today. There were people who actually stayed up all night hitting F5 on the “What’s New” page, waiting for the elusive Wollmeise to appear! The sneak up finally occurred this morning. All the Wollmeise (I heard something like 300 skeins) sold out in under 5 minutes. It was incredible. I managed to score one skein each of Paul, Emil, and Wilder Mohn. ::squee::

Then this afternoon, the pattern for Sock Madness was released. Ya’ll, it’s a zombie pattern. Seriously! The name of the pattern is “Zombie Socks” — check it out. How cool is that?

Here’s the start to my zombie sock. I’m using Wollmeise in Poison Nr. 5:

I just hope I can finish fast enough to stay in the competition, ’cause I already feel so behind… ! I’d hate to be knocked out in round 1. I’ll be knitting into the wee hours tonight (late as I can stand it anyway), knitting while they’re replacing my car’s windshield tomorrow morning, thinking about knitting while I’m at work all afternoon, and then Friday night I’m determined to pull and all-nighter if necessary to finish. Here goes nothing…!

When I went to the knit shop on Saturday, I picked up the yarn I needed to finish my felted Melly Bag.

Here’s the completed bag, un-felted:

Pattern: Melly Bag by Sharon Dreifuss
Yarn: Lamb’s Pride Bulky
Needles: size 13 circulars

This was my first experience with felting. I think I over-felted it just a little bit. But overall I’m very pleased. Right now I have it drying. I’m using an upside-down trash bin to hold the shape while it dries (as suggested by the pattern):

I can’t wait till the bag is dried so I can start using it. It’s a lot bigger than most felted bags I’ve seen, and I love it. (I’m a fan of big purses.) I have some leftover yarn so I think I may make a mini felted bag to go inside it too.

Now it’s back to the baby sweater…

I finally cast on the She-Knits Melly Bag. I’ve had the pattern for quite a while and I’ve been meaning to knit it up forever, but just never got around to it. I think it’s the cutest bag! And size/shape-wise, it’s exactly the type of bag I love. This is also going to be my first attempt at felting, so wish me luck for when I get that far.

Gidget seems to be quite fond of this bag too. She hasn’t left me alone since I started knitting it. Tonight when I tried to photograph my progress, I turned my back to grab my camera and when I turned back to snap a picture, this is what I found:

Perhaps this is Gidget’s way of telling me she wants me to knit her a kitty-bed next?

Anyway, I’ve managed to run out of the yarn I was using (substituted yarns and didn’t calculate properly) so I need to make a trip to the yarn shop (darn!) before I can keep knitting. So I’m going to go back to my socks till I can get to the knit shop on Saturday.

Saturday was the sock workshop with Antje Gillingham at The Neighborhood Knit Shop. She was there to teach her technique for knitting two socks at a time, from her new book Knitting Circles Around Socks.

I was lucky enough to be asked to come help with the class because I’d gotten the book already for Christmas and had knitted a couple pairs using her method. (Which I adore and will never go back to doing socks the old way…)

The class was really large but I think everyone was able to get plenty of personal attention and help when they needed it. Antje was an amazing teacher and was so sweet and funny.

The project for our class was a pair of baby socks (pictured to the left), knit out of Cascade Fixation.

I’d never worked with Fixation yarn before. It’s a cotton-blend, I believe, and it’s extremely elastic. I think a lot of people weren’t too fond of it, but I thought it was kind of fun (at least for something different).

The booties are turning out quite adorable too. By the end of the workshop, most everyone had picked up their gussets and were working on the decreases to the foot.

I got Antje to sign my book too:

The workshop was from 9 till 4:30 and I think I hung out at the knit shop after that till 6. It was a long day. I picked up some yarn to finally make a Melly bag. I’m extremely excited about that! I also picked up a ball of Berocco Comfort to play with. I have an idea in my head of a sweater I want to try and design and I’m thinking of using that yarn for it. I’m working on some swatches with it right now.

Sunday was my 26th birthday. I wound up sleeping in till 1 o’clock. (For shame, I know!) I went out for a late lunch with Erica to Logan’s. Then she and I went shopping at some of our favorite places: Jo-Ann’s and Office Depot. (What can I say? I love crafts and office supplies!) Jo-Ann’s had a lot of cute stuff on sale: I got a cute coffee mug that was 70% off because it had the word “Love” on it and was in the Valentine’s clearance. I also got some rubber stamps 40% off that say “Designed by:” and “Handmade by:” — I thought they’d be nice for making tags for some of my knitted things.

Nick got off work at 4:30 and came home with a frozen custard cake from Ritter’s. (Mmm!) Erica hung out for a while and had cake with us. I opened cards and presents. All totaled, I got $125 toward my spinning wheel! Nick also got me an iTunes gift card. He said I could use it for audiobooks because he knows I like to listen to them while I knit. His parents got me lots of goodies — his mom has the most amazing knack for finding fun stuff. She managed to find me a calendar that has a different knitting pattern on every single day!

So now I’m recovering from my busy weekend. It was a heck of a good time.

Yesterday was so NOT my day for knitting. After finishing my Monkey socks (pictured), I was feeling pretty confident about my knitting prowess and thought I could cast on just about anything.

So, I decided to cast on for this vest. And I was psyched — my first “big” project!

My local yarn shop has had a sample of this vest on display for quite some time, and every time I go in, I’d admired it. Then when I was there on Saturday, Toni had just finished her version of the vest. After seeing hers (which was so perfect!), I decided I needed to knit this vest.

I bought 5 skeins of Cascade Nikki in Chocolate Twist for it. I came home, wound the yarn into lovely little cakes, and started knit-knit-knitting along on size 10.5 needles as recommended in the pattern.

It was really starting to look quite lovely:

I knit quite a bit more, joining the second ball of yarn after the first was used up, and decreasing to knit the back of the vest. I’m not sure what finally made me stop halfway through that second ball of yarn, but it suddenly occurred to me that I’d never checked my gauge. And I’d substituted yarn. And this vest was looking awfully small, despite the fact that it was ribbed and would stretch.

I grabbed my measuring tape. The pattern specified that I should be shooting for 12 stitches in 4-inches. I had something like 18 stitches in 4-inches. *headdesk*

I’m thinking I may pick up some Cascade 220 in a solid chocolate brown today, and knit it together with the Nikki to try and balance out the thick-and-thin nature of that yarn. I think it might make it a little easier to get gauge. (Or I may be completely wrong… I don’t know.)

Anyway, I abandoned my vest project temporarily and decided to work on knitting the second sock to the pair I’m knitting for sock club.

The first sock of the pair (pictured to the right) turned out quite lovely). The yarn is Schaefer Anne, a lovely yarn made from 60% merino wool, 25% mohair, and 15% nylon. (Keep that mohair part in mind.)

I love this yarn. I love it so much that since I knit that first sock, I bought two more hanks of this same yarn in different colorways. It’s soft and fuzzy and feels amazing on your feet.

I’d cast on the toe to the second sock a week or so ago, but I’d abandoned it when I got into working on the Money sock. I decided to get back to it tonight. The next direction on the pattern was to snug up the stitches where you’d done the figure-8 cast on. Okey dokey.

I started working across the toe, snugging up the stitches. Now, mohair, lovely as it may be, loves to stick to itself. So of course snugging up those stitches got a little difficult at times. But I’d tug and work the yarn back and forth a bit and eventually it would snug up and I’d move on to the next stitch. At some point halfway across the toe, I hit a particularly stubborn stitch. I tugged gently. I picked at it a bit. I tugged some more. Finally I yanked…

Um. Crap. That certainly wasn’t what I’d intended.

There’s really no salvaging it, and being that I’ve only just started this sock and I have more than enough yarn still on the ball, I think I’ll just start over. But not right now.

So that was yesterday’s knitting. A mess.

I’m planning on going to knit-night at the local yarn shop here tonight. Maybe I’ll pick up that Cascade 220 to see what I can do with my vest. In the meantime, I’ve decided to start an entirely new project that hopefully won’t give me quite as much trouble. Heh.

So I started a pair of socks for my grandma. I’m using the Pomatomus pattern by Cookie A. (’cause her Monkey socks rocked) and I’m using the Paca Peds sock yarn that I got a couple days ago. I’m hoping they’ll be super cozy and warm.

So I’m knitting while listening to Stephanie Pearl-McPhee Casts Off on audiobook and when that’s over I’m going to start listening to The Friday Night Knitting Club. (Yay Audible!)

Let’s hope today’s knitting is more successful than yesterday’s…