New Yarn? What New Yarn?

I don't know what you are talking about.

I'm on a yarn diet, remember? Which means that I'm not buying yarn. And the only way new yarn will come into the house is if someone gives it to me. And as people I know don't tend to give me yarn, no new yarn for me.

Oh, that yarn.

Well, that yarn has been in my stash for...oh, at least 48 hours, so it hardly counts as new now. Wouldn't you agree?

Besides, Hubby got to buy two new CDs over the weekend, so now we're even.

And, this is for a project that I've had in mind and we were running out of this yarn at the store so I had to get it on Saturday or I might have missed my opportunity.

Based on a Tartan?
Remember how I said I wanted to make socks based on the family tartan? Well I really have been thinking about this for a while. I decided I should act on it since my yarn buying prospects were looking a bit dim and we really are almost out of these colors (I bought the last black) and aren't they just perfect?

Now, I had been trying to think in my head (that doesn't sound good) about a way to do them to really mimic the tartan. I figure they would have to be knit flat and it would involve intarsia.

Of course, I also remembered the red as more dominant and two cross striped instead of three.

The other staff members and I tossed the idea around during slow times, we even considered using eye of partridge to try to imitate the light sections of the black (which probably highlights the difference between weaving and knitting).

But then they talked me down (or talked some sense into me) and I'm going to go with traditional argyles with yellow as the main color, black diamonds, and red for the little accent stripe. I'm thinking I might use red for the cuff and heel as well, to dilute the impact on the yellow. I'll cross that bridge when it's time to cast on, which could be a while. I should finish my Arrgyle pirate socks first.

Wedding Tangent
It's a little unclear whether this actually is the family tartan.
(It occurs to me that posting about the family tartan violates my personal rules about posting too much identifiable personal information on the blog that would allow someone to track me down, but I kind of crossed that line when I started selling patterns on Ravelry. And talking about the store I work in. Anyway. I'm still going to keep it vague. You will have to know about tartans, really want to know my name, and then do some digging to figure it out. And even then, this is the Clan tartan and we are one of the Septs so, ha! Anyway.)

This is the "of Lewis" dress tartan. The hunting tartan is greens and blues and not bad, but I like the dress one better.

Back when I was planning the wedding I was kind of stuck on colors. Then I bought a halter dress and my Uncle the Priest was like "You are not having bare shoulders in church." This is the same man who wasn't bothered by Hubby, our dads, and the groomsmen wearing kilts (that was Hubby's idea). Although the kilt question did get run all the way up to the Bishop (who said it was alright as long as we weren't in the main cathedral in NYC. Everyone along the way acknowledged kilts are traditional male attire, but it's not the Orthodox church for nothing.)

So here we are planning this traditional Russian Orthodox wedding (it's a Christian religion, similar to Catholicism, but better. :-) You know anyone who is Greek Orthodox? Same thing, different language) with the men in the party in kilts and a bagpiper.

At some point I'd been poking around online and found a custom in Scottish weddings is for the groom to give the bride a scarf of her new tartan. So when my Uncle the Priest declared that I had to cover my shoulders, it made sense to get a little scarf and have Hubby present it to me at the door before the ceremony started in earnest (we start at the front door, no marching down the isle for us). Problem solved.

And, since I liked all these colors anyway, it was an easy jump to let the tartan inform the wedding colors. My flowers, the decorations, the icing on the cake, my bridesmaids had black halter dresses and two had red shawls and two had yellow. Everything was sort of yellow and red.

Imagine my surprise then when, a week after the wedding, my father-in-law turns around and says, "By the way, we're not of Lewis we're of Skye."

What?

I have since chosen to ignore that fact. I couldn't find a tartan for "of Skye" anyway. (Actually, I did an internet search again over the weekend. A mug came up, but it looked awfully similar to the "of Harris" hunting tartan.) And the stuff he has around the house has this tartan on it, so I figure I'm good.

Back to the Tartan Socks
So the yarn for the Tartan Socks has been unceremoniously shoved into the dining room credenza with my other active projects. I can probably base them on the pattern for the Arrygles. I have to finish the Arrgyles first. The chart does need to be tweaked a little, which will be easier to do after I've got the fit and where the design is off confirmed.

I will leave you with this picture of Samson on the ride
home yesterday. Look how huge is tongue is! I forgot to include it in the post about the hike. Samson is actually in the picture with Hubby, but he's in shadow so you can't see him. Baru's back is in the foreground.