You've Got Mail!

My Sock It To Me Package arrived!! The girls were very excited to help me open up a package I received from Germany. It distracted them from wanting to go outside into a brewing thunderstorm. :) It was full of fantastic dark chocolate, some scents for tea lights, a notebook, some pretty tissues (how did you know I have a snuffly nose?), and wonderful yarn.
The girls were very excited about the chocolate. Lily kept saying, "Some?" "Treat?" I was very excited to see that because the chocolate is very dark and because Europe has wonderful chocolate laws (or guidelines or something like that) that Lily can actually eat it. The chocolate doesn't have any milk in it! Yahoo! So Lily got to sample her first European chocolate (probably her 2nd taste of chocolate ever). I can safely say that she is hooked. I've got a picture of her with chocolate running down her face, but am having trouble rotating it - silly computer.

And this. Lots of sock yarn! Beautiful sock yarn. Two skeins of Regia in a beautiful muted blues and greens and one of Wollmeise Sockenwolle in brilliant blues. Both German sock yarns, I'm such a fan of buying what you can get locally - this is awesome. Although I've seen the Regia (not this colorway though, and I've never bought any) I've never seen the Sockenwolle up close. It is very pretty. Thank you knittergrrl!

One Sweet Deal

Wanted: Babysitter for 2 little girls
Will Trade: Hand knitted socks (see photo)


Thanks D, you're the best! I'm not sure which one of us gets the better deal, but I think we both win. See, crazy things happen at Knit Night. We talk about making chocolate orange port, drink a little of said port, swap socks for babysitting.... imagine the things you miss if you're not there!

Sneak Peek

Here's a sneak peak at the yarn I'm using for my Sock It To Me sock.... That's not the pattern though...

Contest #2 - My Favorite Yarn

My favorite yarn is Yarni, a sockweight yarn hand dyed by a couple in St. Paul, MN. Their blog is here. The stats are: 460 yds./100g 75% superwash wool, 25% nylon. Machine wash, air dry . It's sooo soft... it's sooo nice to knit with... and it feels lovely on the feet. One of the beauties of this yarn is that there is just so much of it! I knit the River Rapids sock above and I still have a large ball left. It's enough to knit a baby hat and probably booties too.

The only place I've ever seen it for sale is at the Yarnery in St. Paul. Since it's not always (read EVER) easy for me to get there, I call the store. Yes, I actually ask them to describe the colors they have in stock. Oddly, I love all their colors. The colors always seem to be like watercolors - light and soft. There's not a ton of variation in most of the colorways so they work very nicely for lace patterns. I saw the green colorway on someone else's blog and I think that will be the next one I go for. (Although the pink and purple would look great for the girls...)

I seem to be into lacey patterns and cables lately so I'm picking up more and more yarn with just subtle variations instead of the self-striping. I bought the last two balls of Pagewood Farms yarn at our LYS this week. They had Denim and Really Red left so I snatched them up.

And last but not least, here are pictures of my two favorite sock helpers. They tend to pick up my socks and bring them to me wherever I am in the house. Their greatest ambition at this point (besides becoming real princesses) seems to be to learn to knit. I keep saying, not until you're 6 years old.

*Sigh*

The sock I've ordered from Lorna's Laces is just not coming in. The store said it would be 2-3 weeks but it's been 3 weeks and still no word. So... What's a knitter to do? Buy more yarn! Fabric Works (my LYS) just got in some new yarns so I had to try them out. My Sock It To Me pal likes blues, so I found two that just might work. The first is Pagewood Farms hand dyed superwash merino sock yarn in Denim and the second is Knit One, Crochet Too Soxx Appeal in Oceana. The Soxx Appeal is super springy since it has some elastic in it. Both are very cool and I'm going to have a blast knitting both.

More Baby Hats

This is Shelly's Slip Stitch Quilted Baby Hat by Shelly Kang. It's the reason I haven't been knitting on MS3 lately. Or at least one of the reasons. The other being insane headaches from a sinus infection that just won't die. But no whining. This hat is so freaking adorable. I just love knitting it! I'm using Panda Wool from Crystal Palace yarns and I love it love it love it. I might have to make up some boy versions as some one I know is having a boy this fall. I might have to make up matching booties first though - I've got quite a bit of yarn left over. I also had 2 people in my networking group ask if I would make yellow and purple (Viking colors) hats for their babies that are due this fall. I'm not a fan of purple and yellow... this is going to be a stretch for me.

They Fit!

Yes, I realize I'm a glaring fashion Don't. However, I thought I would put in a picture of me wearing my new Sockapalooza 4 Socks.

Here's a better just feet picture...
And a picture of the wonderful package that I described earlier. Yummy chocolate by the way!! Both the red package and the black package is chocolate from Marks & Sparks. Very yummy.

Sockapalooza 4

I love getting mail! Especially when the mail looks like this and comes from overseas!

This little package came all the way from Leicestershire, England. Sweet! Addie was very excited to help me unpack and unwrap the packages. Poor Lily just sat on the couch and watched us unwrap. She couldn't quite scoot her butt off the couch fast enough. I felt like a bad momma, but since the milk chocolates were one of the first things I opened, I didn't want her too near that. Weeza very nicely wrapped all sorts of little things - she obviously knew that the girls would dig opening them with me! So what did I get? Well....

chocolate -yummy!
postcards
some yummy hand lotion
Seriously, you try photographing a clear plastic object! It's a knitting dolly that Addie is extremely excited about - I've told her she needs to wait until she is 6 before she learns to knit, but I may let her try this out earlier just for kicks.
extra yarn for my socks
Oh yeah, and super cool socks! They fit beautifully - I am amazed at how perfectly they fit. I will upload pictures, but they are red and brown stripes and you can see them here.

Optimist Club Knits Hats for Babies

Momma's got skillz! Mad, knitting and baby holding while sitting on a beach on the shores of Lake Superior crazy type skillz! This is just a little ways from our house, but a spot we rarely visit. It was great to hang out with friends, for the kids to dig in the sand with other little ones and just relax (and swat nasty flies).

In other knitting type news, here's something I rarely talk about. The Optimist Club. We had a district wide (North and South Dakota, Manitoba and Minnesota) convention in Duluth this weekend. It was crazy busy and a lot of work to put together but it all came together in the end. In May at the last quarterly meeting, I asked everyone coming to Duluth to bring hand knitted hats to donate to the Birth Centers at our 2 hospitals. It inspired a challenge among 2 men to see who could knit more hats. It inspired someone to talk to a correctional facility about having the inmates knit hats. This weekend, I collected 275 hats - 16 of which have matching booties. WOW! I am so blown away by this, by the generosity of these people. Even more, my challenge inspired people to bring this back to their hometowns and teach other people to knit and collect hats for wee ones. Dang!

So, anyone wishing to join me in making hats can come to Fabric Works on Aug 8 and 22 from 5-7 pm. I'll save you a spot. :)

Mystery Stole 3

Just as I think I'm doing OK on MS3, I have to un-knit (tink) several rows. I seriously do not know what my problem is. It is not like this is particularly difficult, you just need to follow the pattern. Somehow I picked up an extra yarn over and didn't see it until 5 rows later. I tried just barreling through ignoring the extra stitch but it just wasn't working for me. I had to rip it out.

Perhaps if I could work on this during daylight hours it would be easier. I'm pretty sure I made the mistake after working for it for 2 hours at my lovely little LYS. I went home and continued working on it that night because I was so happy to be getting some progress made. I should have just left well enough alone. Oh well, I just keep chugging along on Clue 2.

I checked on the yarn for my Sock It To Me pal and it hasn't arrived yet. I just found another pattern and added it to my Ravelry queue. (have I mentioned I got in? Just a few times!) I am definitely going to use the Icehouse from Lorna's Laces and I will definitely be using a slip stitch pattern of some sort... I just don't know which one. Maybe Bellatrix, maybe Flutterby.