Friday, January 26, 2007

'Cause it's YPF


l to r: Velvet Moon, Blue Brick Wall, Pixie Park (all lightweight)

While talking to BMFA's to re-pay my sock club fee, I somehow got into special ordering a few colors. Little did tapmouse know what a sock-knitting-STR-hoarding fool I would become. And little did I know how out of control my yarn stash would get once I got into sock yarn. I've been relatively good on buying yarn for non-sock projects 'cause I need a pattern to motivate me to buy yarn, even if it's good yarn at a good sale price, but apparently, buying sock yarn is like buying lip gloss or green e/s for me and I have no control. ('Cept makeup's smaller & easier to hide and I buy less of it 'cause Nars 'aint cheap.)


But I am trying to knit my stash away, even my STR. I finally got to the heel & past it (barely) on my STR Christmas Balls Retro Rib sock this week. At 6", this is the longest/cuff leg for me yet (and that's 2" short of the pattern's called for 8"). The slowness of this knit probably wasn't helped by the fact that I couldn't make up my mind if I wanted to do these socks w/dpn's or circs. I started w/dpn's, switched to circs when I got my order (for the exercise), thought it took too long (hah!), switched back to dpn's for a couple rows, decided my gauge was too loose on dpn's to match the circs and I actually liked the circs better for this pattern, so I switched again. My second sock is so not going to match the first 'cause I played the needle switcheroo game too much on the first one.

And look! I'm slowly moving forward on my SKB. I finished the short row shaping and made a better 2nd attempt at reducing the sides (at least it looks marginally better). I have 4 more rows of the body to do before I join in the round and switch to my Boyes size 2 (2.75 mm) interchangeable circs for the lace section. Ugh, I'm not looking forward to sliding the yarn past the joins on my Boyes. Even if I swatched to see if I could get gauge on KP size 2's (3.oo mm), I don't have KP size 2 circs that are long enough (they were bought for socks after all). We'll see how much I'll regret not having a large needle stash.

3 comments:

tapmouse said...

WOW!!! The STR Retro Ribs is coming along!!! Looks great! Me? I've been spindling, but it looks like Tony's ONE sock is almost to the toe decrease, at least...then on to the second sock-UGH!

Lisa B (Moon) said...

I just LOOOOOVE that sock yarn and am UBBER jealous! ;0)
Moon )0(

Batty said...

Lookin' good! I love the color you picked for the SKB.

Sock yarn is addictive. I swear, the stuff should come with a warning label and a power of attorney, because I know my finances are not safe when I run across yet another fascinating sock club. Maybe somebody else needs to take care of my accounts for a while -- at least until the OTHER 2 sock clubs (besides STR) I've been eyeing are closed to new participants.