Grave Concerns
Ya'll are awesome. You really are. You answer my questions and give me yarn tips and read my ramblings and make my socks. Generally speaking, you are a wise and helpful bunch. But some among you have recently caused me to have some grave concerns. You seem unnaturally interested in the stick I dragged home from some far-flung beach. I have come to terms with my odd fascination with rocks and sticks. It's a long-standing affliction. The trunk of The Boy's car usually has a few finds rattling around it. I expect better from you though. You've asked for pictures. [...]
Unintended Restraint
The plan was to just get whatever I wanted. I really don't buy much yarn, I use what I buy (and the accountant swears it's a business expense), and yarn is a better souvenir than a postcard. I intended to indulge. Apparently giving yourself permission to buy it all ahead of time is some sort of counter-intuitive way to insure self restraint. We only visited two yarn stores. The first was Have A Yarn in Mahone Bay. There I got the Hand Maiden Casbah (over there on the far left). I've been a fan of Casbah for a long time. [...]
Slant Redux
The spiffed up version of Slant is now up. It's two pages shorter, and yet contains more actual useful information. I told you I was shamelessly chatty back then. Alas, I could not get new pictures for you. I still have the socks, but a year and a half of wear have rendered them more than a bit fuzzy. You'll have to make do with the old ones. Dippers is undergoing a similar treatment and should be up later this week.
Strike A Pose
Sunday morning it was time to head back to Halifax. We corralled our stuff (somehow it had rather spread out after four days at the cabin) and cleaned up the kitchen (making grill soup in the dark being a surprisingly messy endeavor). But before we could leave, we had a small situation to deal with. Or, more precisely, a large situation. The true size of the stick had finally sunk in. Plans to mail it had been abandoned. We would have needed to construct a serious box and have a long conversation with the post office staff. Things were closed [...]
Shows Continued Improvement
You know how you look back on those (dreadfully earnest and sickeningly leaden) papers you wrote your first year of college and just wince? Or maybe it's entries in your high school journal or your first few blog entries that make you cringe. Well I did that the other day. Not with papers, but with my early patterns. Popped was my first pattern, and I didn't know what in the world I was doing back then. Luckily, that one got totally revamped somewhere along the way as part of it's release through Knit Picks Independent Designer Program, so it's fine [...]
Pleased To Meet You
We had plenty of warning. We knew Earl was coming and so had decided to stay in on Saturday. In the days before, we had visited two yarn stores, a book store, a game store, a grocery store, and two distilleries. We were well provisioned. We spent the morning in the water, then dried off and made breakfast (french toast of course). By noon, it was getting blustery. Some time around two, I stepped outside to try and get a picture. Even standing on the porch under a substantial roof, I was thwarted by blowing rain. You can just make [...]
Blocking
I spent the weekend blocking the socks for the book. Well, not the whole weekend, it doesn't exactly involve a lot of active work, mostly five minutes of soaking and stretching followed by a few hours of waiting for things to dry. Sheri at The Loopy Ewe was kind enough to send me a pair of her lovely sock blockers in medium, as the ones I had were an extra large and so not quite right for this project. Almost all of the socks are here, and blocking takes a while when you've got this many socks, so it seemed [...]
Drumroll Please
And the winner is Christine! Check out her lovely socks, I know she'll put the yarn to good use. I've sent off an email to ask for a mailing address. And to answer her question, the Sock Plus 8 is a bit more tightly twisted than SG Bugga, and the Bugga is a bit softer and fuzzier. They're about the same thickness, and both come in drop dead gorgeous colors. I'd be happy to use either (and both are going to be in the book), and think they'd likely work for a lot of the same patterns. And to everyone [...]
Hit the Beach
Since we had driven up the western side of the Cabot Trail on Thursday, we thought we'd check out the eastern side on Friday. Before we set out, we took advantage of the clear weather and the dock at our cabin to take the final photos of Socky. He very much enjoyed his dip, he encountered no sea monsters, and he was promptly rinsed out (salt water not being good for wool) as soon as we went back inside. The highlight of the drive was Black Brook Beach. Now it seems that 'beach' means something a bit different around these [...]
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