The Best Sock Club Ever!

Ok, I admit I'm biased because the sock club is run by the local yarn store I work at, so I get to be one of the designers.
And I haven't actually ever belonged to a sock club, so it's not like I have concrete information to compare it to. But I know Cynthia did a ton of research before she designed our club.
So it's pretty brassy of me to call The Knitting Central Sock Club the Best Sock Club Ever, but everyone exaggerates sometimes.
The main difference, from what I've seen, is that sock clubs are usually run by people who spin, dye, or do both to yarn. So you always get their yarn, which means you had better like it.
Since we're a yarn store we have access to a wider variety of yarn, so our hook is you know that you are pretty likely to get yarn you know and love, because they've been sold in the store at some point. Which yarn you receive is still a surprise, but the anxiety of whether you will like it is reduced.

For instance, last year's yarns included Koigu, Bearfoot, and Jitterbug. Although we did introduce some new ones through the club, like Alchemy's Temple. We hadn't carried that before and it's delicious.
The majority of the staff love making socks, and we've slowly groomed our customer base to think like we do. All the patterns for the club are designed by either a staff member or a teacher.
Making another attraction, at least for our local customers, the fact that they are familiar with us, our abilities, and in many cases our designs already. Yet another safety net!
We also set up a private Yahoo Group for club members to post questions, discuss the yarn and pattern, and share pictures of their progress. That month's designer was right there with them to make sure everything was ok.
Since a focus of our club was on enhancing abilities, each package included a letter from the designer about the yarn or technique used for the sock design. (Mine was a discussion of negative ease that was very well received, if I do say so myself.) And there was always a little gift as well.
Anyway.
The club was well received last year, so we've decided to do it again. There are some changes. This year we're going to focus more on the techniques in the design, so there will be more solid and semi-solid yarn (last year we did all variegated). And the club is going to run for 6 months instead of a full-year (there will possibly be another 6-month club next year). Among the feed back we received when we launched the club last year was that a year was a long commitment, or people were in other clubs and didn't want to over commit. So this address that issue.
Oh, I forgot one of the best parts! Since Cynthia orders the yarn special for the club people can tell us what color(s) they don't want, so they didn't have to worry about receiving something they wouldn't like. (I was surprised at the number of people who didn't want red.) And we did our best to ensure people still received a variety of colors.
It's just something to thing about. Many of the staff/designers and club members are on Raverly, so you can check out last year's socks that way, and we're going to put pictures of them on the store website, www.knittingcentral.com.
Details are on the store website. Sign-ups close Sept 30, you can do it over the phone. The first package goes out in October, so don't delay!

Variety Is the Spice of Crafting

Which is a darn good thing as it gives us an excuse to endlessly start projects without finishing our current project. And if someone is foolish enough to confront us on the matter, we can easily respond, "Oh, I need multiple active projects in order to avoid repetitive motion injuries in my hands and wrists."
I must pause here to mention that Hubby has never been foolish enough to comment—or more accurately question—on the number of projects I have going at once. He only occasionally comments if I have been working on something for a long time and then suddenly switch, which can be put down to curiosity. And the only time he has protested a mid-project switch was when I was making his Yankee Socks, then he campaigned for them to be finished.
Which is all a round about way of saying, are you as tired of hearing about this endless Sundae trim as I am of knitting it? I'm closing in on the end. I'm now at a length were I have to start attaching it to determine whether I have enough yet. Which is going to make it far less portable.

The Hat to the Rescue
Fortunately, I have P's crocheted hat to fall back on.
I was able to get gauge with the LionBrand HomeSpun and a size L crochet hook. But I wouldn't recommend it—the fabric is rather floppy.
My hooks are, apparently, scattered throughout the house for some reason. I had to troop up the the attic to find the L and I'm sure I own and N but couldn't tell you were it is, and there is an, uh, J in the dining room credenza with some more HomeSpun that I was planning to use to make a baby blanket for my cousin's new baby (who will be a year old in February). Not quite sure I was thinking, allowing all these hooks to wander.
Anyway, the hat was making me feel pretty useless last night as I couldn't get one of the increase rows to work out. It's using basically the same progression I used for my Crochet Guinness Dog Toy and other circular crochet items I've made, so I don't know what the problem was. Whether I followed or ignored the pattern, my stitch count was off.
I blame the HomeSpun, I couldn't see what I was doing. And the Giants game prevented me from counting properly.
So I packed some Cascade 220 and an H hook for the ride this morning—and beat that increase row into submission! The pattern is correct, it's the crocheter that is defective.
I'm going to be extremely bad and work the rest of the hat in the Cascade 220. This will allow me to confirm the numbers but not the size. So I'll have to rework it in the HomeSpun to check measurements.
My kingdom (queendom?) for a smooth, chunky yarn!

By the Way

Summer of Socks ended on Monday. September 1 at 10 p.m. eastern was the official cut off, I believe.
You can tell how far out of it I was at the end there that it has taken me three days to post about it.
Still, it's bitter sweet. :-) Of course, it was the Ravelympics that knocked me off track. Note to self: don't commit to two deadline oriented knitting/crochet activities at once.
I managed to knit three pairs of socks, which is far less then the nine I was anticipating. I think it was nine—one pair for each two week time period. Whatever the number was, I didn't hit it.
On the bright side (let's think positive!):

1. I finally made the Alchemy Girlfriend Cable Socks. I had been lusting over the yarn and pattern from the time it came into the store, waited months and months to buy, then never got around to making it. (I have also only worn them once, as I'm afraid of damaging them, which is silly since I believe the stuff I make should be used.)
   
2. I finally used the Sol Joy Yarn I had bought over a Christmas trip to Lake Placid and just had to have at the time, but left languishing in my stash.
   
3. While using the Sol Joy, I designed a new pair of socks and mastered the Cuban/Sexy Heel we learned when Charlene Schurch was at the store.
   
4. I used my Purple Jitterbug Yarn, which was hanging out waiting to sacrifice itself so the leftovers could be combined with the leftover Blue Jitterbug Yarn. So there was minor stash reduction.
   
5. It was the kick in the butt to get serious about designing my Peacock Socks using the Bearfoot Yarn. Of course I put them aside to work on my Ravelympic projects and it has been so long since I worked on them I fear I've forgotten the pattern stitch. (Fear not! I have good notes.) Actually, I was having palpitations last night because I couldn't find my notes. They were still tucked into the doily book, which was on top of the dining room credenza instead of inside it—where knitting stuff belongs.
   

So I can look back in satisfaction and say I participated in something fun and got a cool button for my blog.

Projects New and Old
The trim for Sundae will be the death of me. I vaguely measured the perimeter of the camisole and came up with 230cm. So I trimmed away. When it looked longish, I measured it and got 150cm. I matched it up vaguely to the camisole and it was almost long enough.
Obviously they were very vague measurements.
At the time it looked like I had 40 repeats to go. But I'm not going to be fooled. I had thought the other trim was long enough as well, but when I sewed it on it shrank or something and I had to knit more. Luckily I was smart enough not to cast off and cut before I started sewing, so it was an easy matter to lengthen it. Aside from the weight of the camisole and the awkwardness of being attached. That should make this new trim even more fun.
This morning I finally started swatching for the crocheted hat I'm supposed to be test crocheting for P at the store. It is in chunky yarn and sized from baby to adult, so it's a fairly quick and flexible pattern. She used Malbrigo Chunky, which is scarce these days. I dug some HomeSpun out of the attic because it is supposed to have the same gauge. I only brought a K hook with me on the train this morning, and my gauge was too big. Calls for 10 dc and I got 13. So I need...oh wait, no, my gauge is too small. I need to go up a hook. Regardless, I don't have either a J or an N with me, so looks like I'll be trimming on the ride home tonight.
Ok, I think that is quite enough for one lunch hour. Really, I have to stop being so long winded!

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.

Walking, We're Walking

Phew. I'm tired. The pups and the husband are tired, too.
The lovely weather made us feel ambitious, so we tossed the pups in the car and went for a hike.
There is an extensive trail system in our town of which we don't take enough advantage.
We did one last year that was relatively flat and very long. We didn't take the pups on that one as we wanted to scope it out first.
The one we did today is fairly close to the house, was rated moderate on the webpage, and was supposed to have a waterfall.
We never found the waterfall, probably because we hadn't printed out the trail map. I did as soon as we got home.
It would appear that we were in the general vicinity of the waterfall, but the blazes weren't clear. We agreed we'll have to try again in a week or two (we have some busy weekends coming up) and head straight for the waterfall.

It's a Leash, get used to it.
Remember how I said the other day the pups don't walk on leashes? Well, it made the whole thing that much more of an adventure. Baru slipped out of his collar twice (but didn't go anywhere and didn't fight when I slipped it back). And Samson was fixin' to strangle himself he was pulling against Hubby so hard when we started out.
Samson caught on pretty quickly, because he's smart as a whip. Baru (at right) stopped pulling, but I think that was more from fatigue than anything else. He did ok, but I had to let him have his head, he wouldn't walk next to me.
After we'd been out there a while (it was at least 2 hours all told) Samson started whining. It was late in the game to be from excitement, so we figure he was complaining that he was tired and his feet hurt and he wanted to go home.

Sights
Aside from a ton of trees, fallen leaves, and rocks. We saw some cows. We were closer than they look here, but it was at the start of the hike and Baru was ready to move on. Samson was barking at the cows. I don't think he's seen a cow before. The cows were totally unimpressed. Baru growled a bit, but I was very happy he didn't head for the hills when he saw them.
We also some some very mean no trespassing signs—really, "you will be shot" and everything. Made us wonder why the landowner was so cranky. He had a fence up, sheesh.
Other stuff
The tables tutorial in the library book was not what I was expecting and kind of boring. The frames tutorial looks good, but is calling for some freeware which I'm not sure about since the book is for Windows users.
And it looks like if I plan to continue my assault on the blog template I might have to learn CSS as well. So I might not be making any more changes any time soon. grrr, foiled.
Knitting has been confined to the trim. The endless trim. I should measure it.

I Step On the Blog!

"Blue, Blue, Electric Blue./That's the color of my room/Where I will live."—David Bowie
You might notice that I've redecorated a bit. Yes, I'm getting pretty dangerous with that library book.
I've actually been wanting to change the colors for a while. I tried to do it one by hunt and peck, but since I didn't know what I was looking at, all I managed to do was change this white background where the text is. That wasn't what I was after at all. But now that I know a little something...I still had to hunt around a bit for the correct section of code to change, but I manged it.
Of course, since the other template that Blogger provided was built by someone who really knew what they were doing, as opposed to me who only sort of knows what she's doing, I've lost some details—like the shadow down the sides of the white section to make it floaty. But I'm working on it!
I have confirmed that a blue background is not available with this template layout, so I'm unique to a degree and haven't unnecessarily taken the hard road like I did with that list the other day.
The next goal is to get sidebar stuff down either side of the main text. hehehe. I'm sure I've seen it on other blogs, but I don't see it in the template options. Well, I bet once I get to the tables tutorial I'll be unstoppable! Also, there are a few other things to clean up, like the boarder on my profile and the bullet points on the Labels List, but they will come in time.

Knitting?
Oh, right, you come here for a reason. My office closed early on Friday, so once I got home I ended up seaming Sundae. It moved along pretty quickly. Then I move on to painstakingly attaching the trim I had to date. Ugh, talk about a pain. The trim is quickly loosing it's charm.
I took it to the store Saturday to get opinions on the ribbon. The closure is a ribbon threaded through the trim that will go up the front.
I was scoping out our lengths of silk ribbon last week so already knew the yellows we had wouldn't work (too orange). I had been thinking green, but we had this nice washed out tan/beige one that everyone agreed was the best. It blends in rather well, but had a touch of contrast. It took a while to select the correct one due to color variations—some of them where too brown. But I'm rather pleased now.
This picture isn't the best. I took it early Sunday morning, but the sun wasn't hitting the deck yet, so it's in shadows. Oh well, the top will be done soon (after I knit another mile of trim for the front and bottom!) and then it will be shown in all it's glory.
But now it's time for breakfast and more HTML!