The Michaels Ad Said That All Yarn Was on Sale...

And for once they weren't lying. Usually all of the yarn is on sale as promised, but the discount on the stuff I want to knit with isn't nearly exciting enough. This time, the sale was as good as the ad made it sound... and when I couldn't get the extra 20% off coupon to load on my phone the cashier gave me one for 25%. 

I know I said I was sick of knitting socks, but just look at the pretty Paton Kroy. I'll keep a pair on the needles to work on when I need my attention free for other things and those pink skeins in the back are calling to me already.

After resisting for a long long time, I finally succumbed to the lure of those pretty Caron Cakes. I tried to pick color combinations that I thought I'd enjoy in a finished project, instead of what looked good in the skein. With the weather getting colder and colder, my plan is to make some cowls or something. (That's the same thing I've got planned for the Woolike, which I'd never heard of. At a dollar sixty-something for  678 yards, it looked like a fun risk to take.)

Have the holiday sales sucked you in yet?

Is it September Yet?

I'm getting impatient, waiting for September 1st and the next Super Scary Sock pattern. It's a weird sort of limbo because I might not like the pattern, which means I'll be waiting for September 11... So what am I supposed to do until then? I didn't want to cast on something  complicated, because if I put that down when the new pattern comes out, odds are slim that I'll pick it back up. The socks I had planned to cast on are in a colorway that seems to be on the supply list...and I want to save the plain stockinette pair I'm already working on for math assignment knitting. 

So last night after I stuck dinner into the oven to bake, I cast on these. By the time I headed to bed at a little before midnight, I was most of the way through the short row heel. It's the Lazy Lace socks again, this time with a lace element that I found in another pattern.

One of my blog readers had a question about knitting a pair of socks from 50 gram skeins:

When you buy two small skeins of yarn for one

pair of socks, do you make one sock from each skein? 

Or do you make one, then use the rest of the skein to begin

the second sock before opening the second skein? 

Perhaps it depends on the yarn, whether it stripes or is

plain or ombré.

When I'm using two skeins of sock yarn I use one for the first sock, then cast on the second sock from the other skein. There are a couple of reasons for that. If I'm using self-striping yarn with a long repeat, I'd rather not worry about what's going to happen with the colors  when I rejoin the yarn at a random point. That was a problem with my second pair of Express Lane socks, except it was a knot in the middle of my skein that created the problem.

Sometimes the two skeins just look different, even if they're the same dye lot. My worst example of that was the Catnip Socks. It was obvious from the beginning that one skein was darker, so I used it for contrasting toes and heels. There have been other pairs where the difference was more subtle and I didn't see the problem until I was halfway through the second sock. Changing yarn mid-sock would have made the problem a lot more noticeable.  

Using one skein for each sock also means that I won't run out of yarn when I least want to, like in the middle of a heel or bit of lace. The leftovers will be, more or less, divided equally when I want to use them later for contrasting heels or toes on another pair.  It won't be perfect, because the yardage per skein can vary a bit, but it's always been close enough for me to work with it. 

 

Getting Ready for New Projects

It always looks prettier in the skein, doesn't it? But if I don't wind the yarn into balls, I'll never have socks, so it'll have to go through this awkward middle stage.

Two days after taking that picture, I'm thinking the awkward stage won't last long...

Looking at everyone else's pretty yarn pictures sometimes makes me suspect that I'm the only knitter out there who doesn't use a ball winder. I bought one years ago, when Knit Picks came out with their own line of knitting accessories. The swift gets used now and then, depending on what brands of yarn I'm knitting with and whether it even comes in skeins that need to be wound. I think I've used the ball winder twice.

I just don't get the love for center-pull cakes of yarn. There are probably some skills I'm missing that would have made mine turn out better, but wrapping it into balls works just fine and doesn't require making room in my sewing corner for another piece of equipment.

How about you -- do you use a ball winder?

{Books and Yarn} The Breakdown

You know those projects you cast on and then absolutely can't put down? This is one of those. 

Look at how pretty the blues and green are! Look at the pretty stitch pattern and what it does to the blues and greens!

Would you believe that this is a different colorway of the same yarn I used for those purple socks? The colors are doing exactly what they should. There wasn't a knot to be found in either skein. I've got my fingers crossed that the color pattern continues to behave now that I'm past  the heel. And once I start the second sock.

The Breakdown by B. A. Paris

I almost gave up on The Breakdown after the first few chapters because I couldn't wrap my head around what the protagonist was doing. Cass had promised her husband that she wouldn't take the shortcut home through the woods, but she did and along the way she drove past a woman alone in a parked car.  I don't get why she didn't call the police after learning that the woman had been murdered and that she was probably the last woman to see her alive.  Unrelated to the murder in the woods, Cass is suddenly suffering from lapses in memory and fears that she's showing the first signs of the early-onset dementia that her mother had. But she won't tell her husband about that, either. When I picked this book to read, I thought there would be a compelling reason why Cass couldn't tell anyone that she'd taken the shortcut. But there wasn't. She just refuses to be a grown up and do the right thing. Farther into the book, things do get more interesting and I'm glad I kept reading until the end. But I didn't enjoy this book nearly as much as I enjoyed Behind Closed Doors, the author's first novel.



The Decorator Who Knew Too Much might be my favorite of the Madison Night mystery series. Like the other books, it really captures the madcap feel of an old Doris Day movie. When Madison's tasseled straw hat falls into the river and she bends over to retrieve it, she spots a face floating just below the water's surface. When the police arrive a few minutes later, the body is gone. Madison expected her working vacation with Hunter to be a romantic getaway,  but staying with his sister and her husband becomes more and more awkward. Jimmy resents Madison because the police investigation triggered by her report of the body is delaying his development project and costing him money. There's a little less emphasis on the mid-century stuff in this book, but the details that the author does include create a wonderful atmosphere. I'm also warming up to Madison more than I did when reading the other books.

Disclosure -- I was provided with an advance review copies by the publishers. All opinions are my own. This post is linked to iknead2knit, and  Frontier Dreams  

{Books and Yarn} Island Knitting

I really thought I'd come home from Hawaii with two finished pairs of socks. Neither needed much more knitting and if we're in one place with chairs and electric lights (as opposed to the tent) I usually do some knitting each evening.

Nope. By the time we showered off the salt water each day, I was exhausted. I did a few rows of lace on this pair one morning and turned a heel while waiting for our planes to board at Lihue and Honolulu. If you want to start conversations with strangers in waiting rooms, use self striping sock yarn. From across the room, a woman asked me about it...and then wanted to know if my needles were metal because she tried to take a crochet hook onboard a few years ago and they made her check it. I looked it up in advance. Knitting needles are allowed. I also had the thinnest, most non-threatening bamboo sets I own.

I got more reading done than knitting, but the other half of the books will have to wait until I have more time to write about them.



The Ultimate Kauai Guidebook: Kauai Revealed was my favorite of the travel books I checked out from the library while we were planning our trip. It's got some detail about the history of the island and is written in a nice conversational tone. I bought the Kindle edition so that I'd have it on my phone for the trip. Having it with me at all times was helpful, but the format works much better in a physical book. I kept clicking to see something like the safety details of a beach and not being able to find my way back to where I'd just been. Another thing that irked me was the author's occasional insistence that something on the island was inferior to something on another island. I was where I was, with that option in front of me. So if the Kona coffee plantation is superior to the Kauai plantation, that doesn't help me. (And we were really happy with our tour of the plantation there on Kauai. For someone who'd never seen how coffee grows, it was pretty dang interesting. Not to mention that it was free and they gave lots and lots of samples.



I read most of Fantasticland by Mike Bockoven on the flight over. Imagine Lord of the Flies set in Disneyworld and you've got the general idea.  One of the world's most popular theme parks has been completely isolated by the flood waters of a hurricane. Emergency workers knew that the employees remaining in the park had emergency bunkers and supplies to last them for months, so they concentrated their efforts on more desperate areas. And things in the park went downhill fast. The novel is presented as non-fiction,  a collection of interviews with rescue workers and park employees, written years after the events that destroyed the park.  It's not exactly fast-paced, but it kept me reading steadily for hours. Events are described several times from multiple points of view, letting the reader piece together the details. Fantasticland isn't Disney, it's its own distinct park with its own history. (Which might explain why there are so many actual weapons around.) If you like horror novels, I highly recommend this one.

Disclosure -- I bought the books myself. All opinions are my own. This post is linked to iknead2knit, and  Frontier Dreams  

{Yarn and Books} Lots of Knitting

On my needles, I've got a very easy pair of socks and a sort of easy pair of socks and the Express Lane pair that I showed you last week. I'm having fun with it all and looking at my stash, deciding whether to stick with the yarns I already pulled for my DIY sampler or pull out another skein of the Mary Maxim Tropical Breeze. For cheap clearance yarn, it's fantastic to knit with.



Follow Me Back by A. V. Geiger

An agoraphobic who refuses to leave her room crosses online paths online with a celebrity who wishes he could escape his contract and leave the obsessive fangirls behind. The book is told through Twitter messages and partial police reports, so you know from page one that the two are headed for something really bad...  I couldn't stop turning pages and now that I've read through to the conclusion I'm completely fangirling over this book. Just WOW! This is the best young adult suspense I've read in absolutely ages.

Disclosure -- I was provided with an advance review copy by the publishers. All opinions are my own. This post is linked to iknead2knit, and  Frontier Dreams  

Express Lane -- A Second Try

Remember last week when I told you that I was debating between two different sock patterns? I wound up starting both. 

Here's my second stab at Express Lane:

The yarn is Drops Delight and the pattern is showing up so much better than it did on my last Express Lane pair. (Those have gone to live with a friend who likes them more than I did.)

{Yarn and Books} Brand New Stripes

I'm enjoying this self striping yarn while contemplating what my next "requires some counting and thought" project should be. So far I'm leaning towards Cath Socks, which are just knit and purl but have fantastic texture, or Express Lane with some more cooperative (less purple and pooly) yarn.

Yarn: Drops Fabel Candy 

Disclosure -- This post is linked to Patchwork Times,  iknead2knit, and  Frontier Dreams  

{Yarn and Books} Please Trust Me...It's There!

(Edited to add -- I figured out what angle to hold the camera at, so I replaced the picture.)

These socks have the most amazing basket weave texture. In real life, you can see it from a couple of feet away. In the pictures, though, the knits and purls get lost in the subtle stripes of the yarn.  Maybe by the time I finish the pair, I'll figure out how to capture it with my camera.



The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women by Kate Moore

I'd heard about the dial painters years ago in high school science class, and seen their story on  those history shows my sons are always watching, but I never realized how truly awful the industry was. The way it was explained to us in school, the victims were silly girls who didn't know any better. But lip, dip, paint was how they were taught to do their job and were continued to be taught even after the dangers of radium were known. What happened to those young women, and the lengths their bosses went to to cover up the facts and keep their factories open, is horrifying. The book is well-written and will haunt me for years to come. Once the author gets to the drawn out court battles, the pace starts to drag a bit, but it's worth reading through to the end.



All the Best People by Sonja Yoerg

There was one scene in All the Best People that I  absolutely loved. Other than that, I had a hard time getting through the book. It explores some fascinating ideas, but the plot builds slowly and shifts between characters and didn't hold my interest.

Disclosure -- I was provided with advance review copies by the publishers. All opinions are my own. This post is linked to Patchwork Times,  iknead2knit, and  Frontier Dreams  

Have I Knit this Pair Already?

I've always been intimidated by those knitters who can tell you exactly what yarn they used for which project, especially when it's a solid color. My memory isn't that good, not unless I'm emotionally attached to the yarn for some reason...and I'm attached to a lot of my yarn stash.

So when I found the finished sock on the right in my sewing corner, I was confused. I knew I'd never used Drops Fabel before last year. And I hadn't knit the Guacamole yet, because I'm only halfway through the first sock.

So what was I holding in my hand? It sure looks like the pair that I'm working on right now. 

I did some searching on my own blog and figured out that it's one of the Green Envy pair I knit in Spring of 2014. There are differences between the two colorways if you look closely enough, but it took holding the socks side by side for me to find them.

You'd think I would've remembered knitting with a yarn this similar before, but nope. I didn't have a clue until I picked up the mystery sock.

The Yarn is Here!

The picture doesn't capture all of the gorgeous possibilities that I see when I look at these skeins. Twenty two pairs of pretty new socks, unless I decide to use some for a shawl or two. AND not counting leftover socks or Frankensocks!  I'm in love with all of it.

Nordic Mart has Drops Fabel and Drops Delight for 25% off all month long. No affiliation, no connection between me and the company, I just love their yarn and the fact that I can knit up so much of it without breaking the bank.

Weekly Stash Report

Fabric used this week: 0 yards
Fabric used year to date: 2 yards
Fabric added this week:  0 yards
Fabric added year  to date: 0
Net used for 2017: 2 yards

Yarn used this Week:  300  yards
Yarn used year to Date: 2100 yards
Yarn added this Week: 8800 yards
Yarn added Year to Date: 0 yards
Net used for 2017: 6700 yards

This post is linked to Patchwork Times.

The Second DIY Sock Yarn Sampler

In mid-November, I  picked out some of the stash yarn that I was most excited about. You can see the before picture in this post if you're interested.

Not quite three months later, here's the after, not including a pair I made with yarn that wasn't in the box and the pair I was working on when I started...

My little experiment was more successful than I expected. Even though I can cheat all I want, I was motivated to cast on with all of the pretty the yarn before it disappeared back into my stash. 

Last week, I put away the three skeins that were left and pulled out different colors that I'm excited about, this time thinking about Valentine's Day and spring. In another three months, I'll do it again. (How weird is it that I've already got a few of the summer yarns picked?)

Sock Madness starts in March and I'll dig through my stash for whatever yarn suits the patterns. I've also been drooling over some patterns that aren't socks or written for sock yarn. But I think I'll keep rotating my stash for the rest of the year and see what happens. Three of the four fall pairs were knit from yarn that had been buried for years.

Weekly Stash Report

Fabric used this week: 1/4 yard
Fabric used year to date: 1/2 yard
Fabric added this week:  0 yards
Fabric added year  to date: 0
Net used for 2017: 1/2 yard

Yarn used this Week:  0  yards
Yarn used year to Date: 1100 yards
Yarn added this Week: 0 yards
Yarn added Year to Date: 0 yards
Net used for 2017: 1100 yards

{Yarn Along} A Mystery Skein of Opal

I've been wondering what this skein of sock yarn would do when I finally got around to casting on. The label was intact, but I couldn't figure out which part of it would give me the information I needed, beyond the fact that it's Opal. If I'm remembering right, this is one of the skeins I picked up for a buck at an estate sale back in 2009. If it's not from that estate sale, it's from the box my great-aunt gave to me and Teenage Daughter about the time we were moving down here. Either way, it's been in my stash for a long time and I'm happy to be knitting it up.




Someone is Watching by Joy Fielding

Bailey Carpenter has always been confident and determined. Until that night when, crouched in the bushes to gather  incriminating evidence against a deadbeat dad, she is brutally attacked from behind.  After her physical wounds begin to heal, she can barely bring herself to leave her condo. Every man she comes into contact with is a potential suspect. The police have no physical evidence and are making no progress towards finding her rapist. She lives in constant fear, barely to separate nightmares from the actual events of her day. As her condition deteriorates, her half-sister and niece move in with her. Watching Bailey unravel and lose control of her own life  is sad and unsettling. Her reality-television niece is way too curious about the attack and watches 1000 Ways to Die constantly. (I saw two minutes of that show once and apparently just the mention of it is still enough to make me uncomfortable.) Someone is Watching is one of the most intense thrillers I've read in a long time, and one of the gloomiest, but it's also one of the best, especially the ending.



Scheduled to Death by Mary Feliz.

When a client's fiance is found electrocuted in his home laboratory, Maggie is determined to help the professor clear his name. There's no shortage of suspects or motives -- a lot of people are after Lincoln Sinclair's property and whoever was responsible for the murder doesn't seem likely to stop with only one victim. I absolutely loved the first Maggie McDonald mystery, but this book is missing the strong focus on Maggie's family that drew me to the series in the first place.

Disclosure -- I got Someone is Watching from the library. I was provided with an advance review copy of Scheduled to Death by the publisher. All opinions are my own. This post is linked to Patchwork Times, Yarn Along, Crazy Mom Quilts , Wrap up Friday  

Putting Together My Own Sock Yarn Sampler

Whenever Knitpicks sends an email with one of their new yarn samplers, I get a little bit weak in the knees. They're always so gorgeous and so many of the yarns are in colors that I'd love to knit with...which probably explains  why I've got so much of their yarn in my stash already, often in some of the same colors as the samplers I'm drooling over.  I can't help it that it looks prettier in the professional photographs than it does in my knitting bag.  

For a while now, I've been keeping my favorite socks yarns in a vintage train case. It's cute and keeps them safely contained and won't break if a kid happens to sit on it. (Can you guess how many plastic bins I've lost over the years?)  The only problem with that organization method is that the newest yarn goes into the case and the older stuff gets forgotten. So when I pulled out all of my sock yarn a few days ago, I picked out the colors I'm most excited about. Half of it is from the oldest depths of my yarn stash and the rest is newer. The plan is to do another sort in this spring and replace whatever I haven't used with the yarn that makes my heart go pitty-pat then.

In the meantime, I'm knitting away on a new pair of socks --

I made it through all of this in five  days before deciding that I'm sick of ribbing and can't stand the idea of knitting another round. We'll see how long it takes me to get over that.

(Can anyone else see a repeat in the yarn pattern here? I sure can't!)

Making Up For Lost Time

After almost two weeks of not knitting at all, I'm making up for lost time. The new Fabel sock is up to the heel and I've finished the first clue of the September Scare socks.

This is the first time I've knit mystery socks and I'm not sure how enthusiastic I am about the idea.
I figure I've got the orange yarn already and I'm chomping at the bit to for Super  Sock Scarefest to start, so I might as well give it a shot.



The Sister by Louise Jensen claims to be "a psychologist thriller with a brilliant twist you won't see coming." I'll admit, I didn't see the twist. Or the twist that came after the first twist. But an unpredictable ending isn't the only quality I'm looking for in a book. I didn't love this one.


Disclosure -- I was provided with an advance review copies by the publishers. All opinions are my own. This post is linked to Patchwork Times, Yarn Along. 

I Want to Knit With All My Yarn

I ordered a bunch of yarn...then I ordered a few more skeins...then I knit a couple of pairs of socks with the new yarn and started looking at some stuff that was already in my stash... And now I pretty much want to knit all of the yarn I own right now.

That's about seven evenings of knitting.  The blue and brown pair is Taffy Sock-Ease and the multi-colored pair pair is Summer Night, part of the Arne and Carlos line from Regia.



One of the things I'm enjoying about the Potting Shed Mysteries by Marty Wingate is that I haven't had to wait an entire year for the next book in the series. The Bluebonnet Betrayal has Pru working with the Austin Rock Garden Society to build a garden at the prestigious Chelsea Flower Show. Pru is looking forward to the delayed arrival of Twyla Woodford, the president of the society, but shortly after the woman finally reaches the garden show her body is discovered in the partially built exhibit. It was enjoyable to see Pru get a chance to work with plants from her native Texas and I love how, in addition to solving the mystery, she deals with the repeated setbacks that threaten their display.


Disclosure -- I was provided with an advance review copy by the publisher. All opinions are my own. This post is linked to Patchwork Times and Yarn Along 

Knitting in the Car

If I've got to spent three hours a day commuting to a job that isn't mine, at least I can spend some of that time knitting. 

One of these weeks, I may show you some knitting isn't a pair of socks. But there will probably always be books...




Daughters unto Devils by Amy Lukavics is the scariest teen novel I've read in quite a while. Take all of the real life horrors that  come along with life on the prairie in the 1800s...and then add demons to the mix. After the awful events of the previous winter, the Verner family has decided to leave their mountain home and start over in the prairie where they've been told that there are empty cabins for the taking. They do find a cabin large enough to be comfortable for their family of seven, but the interior is badly damaged and reeks of blood. Sixteen-year-old Amanda doesn't quite believe her father's explanation that someone must have butchered an animal inside, but she's more troubled by her hidden pregnancy and the endless cries of her baby sister. Whatever life on the prairie holds for her family, she believes that is has to be better than the winter they just survived. She's wrong. If you want to read something that will keep you up all night, I definitely recommend this one.

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Becca and Johnny are sure the car accident that killed their loved ones was no accident and they're determined to get revenge on the boy who caused it. If You Wrong Us by Dawn Klehr is the story of how they go about it,  combined with the backstory of the events that led to the accident. I kept getting  confused about who did what and when. Sometimes I think it was  deliberate misdirection by the author and sometimes it was just me.

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On her way to appear at a writer's conference, best-selling author Livvy Flynn rolls her convertible and awakens in the basement of a woman and her flute playing daughter. The Detour by S. A. Bodeen is Misery with an unlikable teenage protagonist. Livvy's captors refuse to release her until she apologizes for the wrongs she's committed, but she doesn't know what she could have done to them. It was hard to feel much sympathy for Livvy, who is spoiled and self-centered, but the book was fast paced and a good quick read, despite an obvious twist or two. 

The publishers sent me ARCs.  This post is linked to Patchwork Times, and Small Things.