Radio silence

Ahhh, I've been wayward lately, haven't I? So much for my attempts to keep this thing updated fairly regularily. Well, There has been some knitting in the past 2 weeks, but not an overabundance. I've been enjoying City of Villains, especially with the planned winter events and, well - someone came up with this great idea to make up a supergroup of Santas and other holiday themed villains and rampage in the Bloody Bay PVP area this weekend. So, all of last weekend was spent getting my santa, Santa sans Pants, leveled to 15. I got him to 13 by Sunday night, and I'm planning to get the other 2 in before Sunday.

BUT. Knitting. First off, a picture of my haul from the Tampa store. 8 skeins of cascade - the green quattro will become the modified Cozy for my granma; it's already been cast on and one repeat finished. The top ball of Sockotta is also going to be socks for her, which I have already begun. I'm on the foot of the first one, so it should be finished soon. The purple, black, and blue skein beneath it is one my mom bought - I have a feeling they may also turn into granma socks at some point. And below that, the Opal Chameleon, well, that's for me. Because I love self patterning yarn, and I love green.

The black, greys, and yellow? Well, they got turned into this: My first attempt at a robot. And my first successful attempt at intarsia. I know there are problems with it - namely, tension issues and the lower right corner of the light grey panel I had some mistakes that I tried to fix with duplicate stitch. He's somewhat lumpy because I had problems getting the fiberfill I used to stuff him to sit right. I'm overall pleased with him, especially because I am now no longer afraid to try projects that involve intarsia. He used up surprisingly little yarn, as well, so I've got plenty left over to make more metronome themed robots. I think next time, I will go down significantly in needle size (the pattern calls for a size 8, I used a size 7, and I'm still not pleased with how well you can see the fiberfill through the stitches) and switch the dark grey and black.

And on a metronome related theme, since I am pretty obviously a big fangirl (given the plan to buy everything they release, the tattoo of the name of one of their songs in katakana on my wrist, the robot, etc...) I came up with an idea. Actually, I blame my screensaver - which is one that came with their Electric Travel CD. They sometimes use a logo that is the katakana character 'me' in a diamond. And on this screensaver, I noticed that hey, that looks like it could be easily graphed... well, I now need to get about 3 skeins of black and 1 skein of yellow. I have a scarf in mind - it will incorporate the 'me' logo on one end, have vertical yellow stripe, and on the other end, the number '02'. To explain that - their costumes usually are numbered. Sharaku is 01, Fukusuke is 02, Riu is 03, and Yuichiro is 04. As Fukusuke is my favorite (oh, the crazy twitching, the cool songs he writes, and HOW COULD I FORGET HIS ASTOUNDINGLY AWESOME EYEBROW!), so I figured I'd put his number on it. I've graphed everything out, and figured that I will have to knit it flat, use intarsia for the two panels, and then seam the whole affair shut. I'm pretty excited about it, because I've never really designed my own pattern before, so I hope it works out well.

Well, now that I've babbled about that, a month ago, my living room looked like this:

Yeah, this was how I finally was able to wind up my self-striping yarn. I had some seriously horrible problems winding this up, so many knots that I got to the point where I was just breaking the yarn, tossing the knotted bits in the garbage, and saying 'fuck it'.

But, over Thanksgiving weekend, I did finish one of the socks with the self-striping.

... and I'm suffering some serious second sock syndrome, can you tell? That's 5 socks there, 5 without a match (the self-striping should very obviously be the one on the far right). What's worse is that any and all other socks on needles have been abandoned in order to finish the socks for my granma. Well, at least I know how to prioritize?

I've been thinking a lot about sock yarn lately, too. I really like knitting socks, and I've been trying to use as many different types of sock yarn as I can find. So far, I have two favorites: Cervinia Calzetteria and Plymouth Sockotta. I know, blasphemy, right? I didn't list some wildly expensive sock yarn! I didn't say 'Lorna's Laces' or 'Koigu'! And I've used both! Clearly, I'm a heathen.

But seriously, both Calzetteria and Sockotta are my favorites. I made my first pair out of Calzetteria a year ago, and they are still sturdy and almost completely pill-free. They have worn extraordinarily well. As has the pair I have made of Sockotta - which is probably why I have several more skeins of it in my stash. I also, unlike apparently most knitters, like the cotton content, and I think that may have something to do with why it wears so well. Best of all, both are cheap. You can get 2 skeins of Calzetteria at Smiley's Yarns online for $5 (and I intend to buy more, once I can justify buying more sock yarn). Sockotta runs about $9 a ball, which has enough to make a pair of socks in it. And I LIKE affordable.

Other yarns I've used have been okay. Koigu I would buy again just because of the amazing colorways - the same for Lorna's Laces, although I may stick to the sport instead of the sock, since the sport is a little thicker. But Koigu requires handwashing, and the pair I have from Lorna's Laces have pilled something awful on the back of the heel where it meets the top of my shoe. I do not think I will be using the Lang Jawoll again (the green jacquard in the picture above) because I do not like the way it feels when knitting. Of course, I haven't had a chance to wear them yet, so my mind may yet be changed. And Elann's cotton/elastic sock yarn, I will probably never use again for socks, because it made my feet hurt (but I would like to use some of their other 'sock it to me' yarns, if they ever restock them). It will also be interesting to see how the Fortissima socks wear, when I finish them. I have not yet made socks from the Opal yarn I've bought, and I would also like to try Trekking XXL sock yarn, because the colors are pretty cool, and it's also fairly cheap (about $14 for a skein big enough for 2 pairs). I also would like to try Knitpicks 'Dancing' sock yarns - and they have a sampler that I may well buy with all the colors in it. The 100% merino wools from Knitpicks are pretty nice, but as far as using them for socks goes... well, my feet must be extra hot, because I tend to end up with the bottoms felted and the rest of the sock accordingly warped (same goes for the 'paint your own'). I'm trying to work a way around this - maybe make the socks bigger in the foot, so it won't be a problem? Or maybe it's just my work shoes that make them felt up. That is really their only drawback, besides requiring hand washing.