Adding to the sock stash

Posted on 15 June 2006 by Kris

Some knitting progress has been made, but none particularly of note. Yet, anyway.

I’ve been missing out on San Diego gatherings again. This is sad in and of itself, but even more so because I had to miss the last knitting event at Kris‘s place before her move. Sorry, Kris! I’ll miss knitting with you, and I hope the move goes well.

Last weekend, I missed the knitting meetups because I went back to my hometown. It wasn’t really a trip made for fun, but I did get a tiny bit of time to myself. Predictably enough, I used that time for retail therapy, hit the two yarn shops in town, and ended up with the following:

The yarn is Louet Gems Pearl. Fingering weight yarn is the only kind of yarn I don’t mind a) impulse buying and b) stashing in moderation, because I can always find a use for 100g. I’ve also been making a concerted effort to try new yarns, which is why I ended up buying this and not, say, more Koigu. (I did have to try very hard to resist the Koigu, though.)

You’ll also see a sheep tape measure. Would’ve loved a black one, but oh well. I’ve wanted one of these for awhile, and I decided that Sunday was finally the time to buy one.

And now, for some musings on the two yarn shops I visited:

 
Yarn!
2311 Santa Clara Ave, Alameda, CA 94501

(Lamest name ever, no?)

I’d been here once before, about a year ago, and lamented on how it wasn’t organized in a seemingly logical fashion. But this time, I noticed a few things were placed differently than they had been on my previous visit, and now it all makes sense.

They have a good selection of yarns. They’re mostly at retail price, though, and things end up being even more expensive there, as sales tax is 1% higher in Alameda than it is in San Diego.

Given that pretty much the only kind of yarn I’ll impulse-buy is sock yarn, I did spend a bit more time lingering in front of that section. Other than several colors of the Louet Gems Pearl, they had several colorways of Koigu that I haven’t seen here in San Diego, which I may very well go back for on a later trip. Assuming that I’ve made a dent in my sock stash by then, that is. They also had some Opal (which I’m not fond of), Cascade Fixation, and I think Sockotta, too, but I didn’t really look because I didn’t like the colors.

 
Tuscany Yarn
1916 Encinal Ave, Alameda, CA 94501

Some of their yarn is nice, but they really didn’t have much of a selection at all. Nothing but Sockotta in the way of sock yarn, for one thing. And ow, the markup!

They had very few books, and not a whole lot of interesting patterns, at least in the shawls binder. A fair amount of Clover needles, but not a whole lot else in that department. Well, they did have some Brittany Birch and Bryspun DPNs, but I’ve broken entirely too many of the Brittanys in the smaller sizes and the Bryspuns didn’t really appeal to me.

I ended up buying something at this store anyway – the tape measure, which was, not surprisingly, a little bit overpriced. Oh well, I don’t regret the purchase at all!

I admit that I mostly bought it because the employee working that day made such a positive impression on me. I normally like to be left alone while shopping, but the employee, whose name I didn’t catch, provided some surprisingly pleasant conversation. Especially after I mentioned that I’m particularly fond of socks and lace.

 
I’ll have to check out more Bay Area yarns shops next time I’m up there. Any suggestions?

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June 2006 goals

Posted on 01 June 2006 by Kris

Last month’s goals:

  1. Finish Eris – Not done. Bloody overtime hours…
  2. Finish Forest Path Stole – Done!
  3. Finish at least one sock – Not done.
  4. Make some sort of progress on the remaining pair of socks – Done, I guess, because I did knit a few rows for both pairs.
  5. Hold off on pipeline projects until finishing at least one WIP – Done!

This month’s goals:

  1. Finish at least one WIP
  2. Start Tina shawl

I think I keep jinxing myself by making “Finish Eris” a goal, hence why I’m not being very specific this month.

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Overtimed out

Posted on 31 May 2006 by Kris

I haven’t updated in quite awhile. Nor have I done much reading from my list. Oh well. Like I’ve said before, this is a super-long-term project, so…

I did finish 1919 back in April, and I started The Big Money. I’ve still not finished the U.S.A. trilogy, though. Nor have I finished Blindness by Jose Saramago, which I started in late April and have only picked up sporadically in the past couple of weeks.

It’s partly because I’ve been distracted by Stanley Cup playoffs. I picked a bad year to start reading from these lists, because there are only four things I’d care to watch when they’re actually televised and three of them – the Winter Olympics, Stanley Cup playoffs, and the World Cup – are 2006 events. Okay, so the Stanley Cup happens every hockey season, and I’ll be missing most of the live broadcasts of the World Cup games because they’re airing during business hours, but still.

It’s also because work’s been crazy, and I’ve been putting in massive amounts of overtime. Taking it back into Bookworm’s Quest territory and away from personal blogging, this means that I haven’t had the energy to invest in the books that I’d had in progress. The Big Money is even more difficult for me to read than the preceding book in the series, and the characters really start to blur together when you’re seriously lacking sleep. And Blindness, while well done and compelling so far, is not always “enjoyable,” and it’s hard to keep track of who’s speaking (which I’m sure is deliberate, a subject I’ll touch upon in a later entry).

So I opted for lighter reading material throughout the month of May. Most of that material is not on my master reading list. But, well, my sister had shown me the Memoirs of a Geisha DVD the last time I saw her. (Terrible movie, by the way – not only is it far too much of a chick flick for my tastes, it’s also a poor adaptation, and my sister kept asking me to elaborate events and details.) For the sake of comparison, this meant that I had to read the book by Arthur Golden.

I hadn’t read it since 2003. I really liked it at the time, but it looks a little different three years later. Now I feel that it moves a little too slowly for my tastes, and it gets to be a little sappy. But, I still think it’s pretty well-written, with some lovely descriptions. And it suited my needs nicely. It’s entertaining enough, and I don’t have invest too much energy and thought into it – I can just let go and enjoy it for what it is.

Blog entries and other site updates will be sparse for a little while longer. But I’ll be back with more bookish blather soon enough!

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Entrelac and lace

Posted on 29 May 2006 by Kris

Look, an FO!

(Not entirely true to color, but close enough!)

Pattern: Forest Path Stole by Faina Letoutchaia, published in Interweave Knits Summer 2003

Yarn: Jaggerspun Zephyr in Bottle Green. It’s wonderful to work with and has a lovely sheen to it. I used just under 2520 yds/8 oz.

Needles: US3 Crystal Palace circulars and DPNs

I really enjoyed knitting this! Normally stoles bore me to tears, but the entrelac and the continuous switching between charts kept things interesting.

The stole looks like a more intimidating knit than it actually is. This was the first time I’ve done entrelac, but it’s not a difficult technique. The lace charts aren’t too hard, either, but if you ever knit this, don’t forget to check the errata first!

I never managed to get the selvedge stitch count to work out for the left side triangles, but that wasn’t a big deal – I just picked up one less stitch along those triangles and adjusted the next row accordingly.

If I could have done anything differently, I would have figured out a way to attach the side borders as i went along. Because the lace was the fun part, and the seed stitch border was a bit monotonous and anti-climatic afterward.

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Lime green blood

Posted on 26 May 2006 by Kris

Before I got to the actual blocking, FPS spent a good amount of time in the bathroom sink. This is because immediately after I started washing the stole, the water turned into a lovely shade of lime green. (I’d post a picture of it, but none of the one I took showed the hue in its full neon glory.)

Yeah. Wasn’t expecting the stole to be that much of a bleeder.

So, I broke out the vinegar, added some to a new batch of water, and soaked FPS for a little while. Unfortunately it didn’t help enough, as FPS insisted on bleeding through the following couple of rinses. At least the color was lighter, but still, serious bleeding going on. Back into a vinegar rinse it went. And the cycle repeated until the water was finally close to clear.

You’d never know how much it bled unless I told you, though, because the color of the yarn still looks pretty good.

Here’s a detail of the stole while it’s still on the blocking board:

It turns out that my length estimate was quite a bit off, because I’d forgotten how the seed stitch and selvedge edges would limit how much I could block this out. Without borders, the stole was ridiculously stretchy when dry; with borders, I was lucky to get five feet of length when damp. It’s still longer than I am tall, so it’s a perfectly reasonable size, though I would have preferred it to be longer.

I’ll be heading out of town for the weekend shortly, so I won’t have time to take finished photos until Monday. Look for a happy FO post then!

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