Sunday Randomness

Discovery of the day
Google.ca's logo has a knitting kangaroo theme! Does that sweater have three sleeves though?

More on the stash
What a coincidence! The very same day I wailed about stash, Wendy Johnson proposed a stashalong. At least, I think it's a stashalong.



It seems very informal though--there are some rules but we can modify them to fit our needs. I for one would like to make an exception for thank-you yarn (i.e. yarn purchased partly because someone at a store really went out of their way to help me) and souvenir yarn.

More progress
The first sock from the Jitterbug yarn is finished, except for those (un)darned ends. When I was winding up the yarn into a ball, I discovered that the ball actually consisted of two strands knotted together. It was annoying to say the least, but I decided to wind each strand into a separate ball, knit them up and see what happened.

I started with the smaller ball and, using the ball band's pattern, managed to finish an entire sock without having to join more yarn. The little blip of yarn in the lower left-hand corner is what remained.

Except for the knot, I really liked working with this yarn. Even the plain green parts seemed to be dyed in a way that gave them extra depth, and splits were rare. I'll have to keep an eye out for future shipments.

And more progress
I've passed the thumb part of the mitten. Ecce!



Oh yeah...
Merry Christmas!

Are we there yet?

I finished the Whitby socks!

They look very comfortable, and I just wish my work shoes were big enough to accommodate such thick socks, so I could wear them to work and maybe neutralize my boss's occasional remark that, for all of my knitting and talk about knitting, she never actually sees me wear any handknitted goods.

I also finished and mailed off various little Christmas items last week. I thought I would be good for a while and try to stick with stash yarn, but my intentions were not so much foiled as trounced and shaken down for lunch money by 1) the sudden appearance of Colinette Jitterbug sock yarn at my LYS, and 2) Eunny Jang's Anemoi Mitten pattern. I can't really complain though...working with them both is enormously satisfying.

The socks are from the ball band pattern, but with a reinforced heel instead of the plain one described.



For the mittens, I'm using Jamieson's Shetland DK with 2.25 mm needles. The fabric feels so dense that I'll be slightly disappointed if the mittens turn out to be anything less than bulletproof (not that I plan to test that).

The struggle with the stash reminded me of S.A.B.L.E.* and a possibly related concept, the stash asymptote (has someone else has already come up with this?). My recollection from school of the asymptotic curve was that, no matter how far it went along the axis (or function, or whatever), it never actually touched that line. In this case, the line (of course) would correspond to the point of actually having all the yarn one could ever really, really, really need want.

Shameless plug: Instead of Advent chocolates, why not have Advent knitting videos? Check out the collection of knitting videos Silver Arrow Knits! has been compiling.

*Stash acquisition beyond life expectancy, i.e. more yarn than one can expect to use in a lifetime.

What were they thinking?

I found out recently that, effective January 2007, yarn will become taxable in Rhode Island! I'd like to know who came up with that idea. What a rotten way to start the year!

On a more pleasant note, I spent part of Sunday afternoon teaching a friend how to knit. The twist (hah) is that he is way more of a leftie than I, and even crochets left-handed (I knit right-handed, despite learning from a book that had diagrams for both ways). He offered to learn to knit right-handed and reverse it later, but I was kind of curious about knitting left-handed anyway, so I hauled out some needles and yarn and muddled through the process.

It was easier than I had expected, though this might be partly because I've already been doing some continental knitting (or at least my interpretation thereof) when my right arm needs a break. However, it also made me wonder if yarn is spun to make certain styles (or handedness?) of knitting easier than others. I noticed some of our yarn untwisting almost completely, and wasn't sure whether to blame that on the direction of the ply or the yarn in general.

Oh dear, thinking of yarn just reminded me again of that tax...grr....

(My husband points out that, having lived in Canada for most of my life, I should be used to being taxed up the wazoo, but it still hurts.)

Yes, I am easily amused.

Library Stuff posted about Dumpr, a site where you can insert your own photos into museum frames. Imagine! With just a few clicks, one could start a show on yarn:


















Or, one could turn a tabby into an art form:

Those socks just sneak up on you.

Somehow I managed to get through 1.5 socks without posting an official photo. True, there was a partial glimpse of sock #1 a couple of weeks ago, but this pair has mostly stayed hidden. So, I decided to remedy the situation by exposing them shamelessly now.



Pattern: Whitby, from Nancy Bush's Knitting on the Road.
Yarn: 3 skeins of Artyarns Supermerino, colour #247. The socks started as some light stashbusting, but then I realized I was going to run out of yarn so it ended more as stash topping-off, or equalizing, or something.
Needle size: 2.75 mm.

Progress has been a bit slow, not because of the socks themselves but because I also knitted a couple of very small things for a very small relative--namely, my niece-to-be, due in January. At least, I think my brother said the baby would be a girl. The colour might work for a boy though.