mama-of-purl - sockapaloooza

The Sock Saga:-)

noreply@blogspirit.com () — Sat, 13 May 2006 19:25:00 +0200

PEOPLE, GET READY- me and my socks have finally been united this morning!

After another unsuccessful visit to the post office yesterday, I got a call later last night that they did track the parcel down, hooray! I was at the post office at 9 a.m. to pick it up, and it was this huge box! The box and I caused a little bit of a stir, because I couldn't wait to open it until I got home, so I opened it right outside the post office:-)

My socks came all the way from Texas! And there were SO MANY goodies in the box- my incredible sock pal NanC spoiled me rotten! I was oohing and aaahing for a minute before I even got to the socks;-) Now the socks- I was speechless.

First of all, Nanc pick such a gorgeous yarn, Cherry Tree Hill Supersock in the beautiful Life's A Beach colorway- my favorite colors combined with an intense warm yellow that puts just the right kick into it- and the colors are so vivid!

And she made me Pomatomi... I took a million pictures, but unfortunately there was no-one to take a picture of my face when I saw those. Aaah! I've been so envious of several sockapalooozers receiving Pomatomus socks and I've been secretly hoping I'd get a pair myself;-) That's one of the coolest patterns ever, and I've just been a little too intimidated by it to start it.

May I present to you: my sockapaloooza socks in all their glory

THEY FIT PERFECTLY! They're snug, but not too tight, so they show off the pattern in a beautiful way. I couldn't stop looking at the socks!

Oh, and the length is perfect, too. Uh, I warned her my feet were really long... there are a bunch of people about that on her blog, too;-)

Now let's get to the rest of this much-awaited parcel-

first of all, NanC arranged everything in this cute (and handy) basket, which she also decorated with these cool hand-made buttons with pictures of the progress pix and her, yeah, creepy but cool Blythe doll posing with the yarn, a sockapaloooza button, and a 'take back the knit'-style one. Johanna instantly claimed the Blythe buttons as well as the cute pencils.

And, umm- what else do you see in the basket? KNIT PICKS Memories!!! In my favorite colors! I've been to the Knit Picks site so many times checking out their beautiful colorways, but they don't ship outside North America. The yarn smelled wonderfully of the almond soap, and NanC also gave me a stack of Kool-Aid for my dyeing adventures. She also wrote me a long letter- gotta love old-school letters on p-a-p-e-r:-)- and some gorgeous stitch markers with aqua beads on them.

I mean really- how amazing and thoughtful is this parcel?

THANK YOU SO MUCH, NANC!! YOU'VE BEEN AN AWESOME SOCK PAL! BIIIIIG HUUUUG!!!

Seriously, NanC left me comments all along, giving great advice and making me more and more curious, I wouldn't have minded a plain stockinette sock even. Receiving this package and these breathtakingly beautiful socks blew my mind!

Want a before and after shot? Those are very happy feet now!!

My socks are in town...

noreply@blogspirit.com () — Fri, 12 May 2006 10:40:00 +0200

...I just don't have them yet!

Had a notification in the mail yesterday, that DHL couldn't deliver my package on Wednesday and then they couldn't find it at the post office yesterday! Sniff! I've called customer service and they promised me to make my case top priority!

My sock pal got her socks!

noreply@blogspirit.com () — Thu, 11 May 2006 10:45:00 +0200

Elise got her package! She's been a little impatient, but she didn't know her socks had to cross the Atlantic to get to Brooklyn;-) She sent me an e-mail today and said she was going to post pix soon!

The weird thing is, that in the sock pal info I received, it said she was blogless. When I checked out the other two Elises' blogs on the list, I did have a feeling that one of them would me my sock pal and had just forgotten to include her blog address in the info.

When I got the snail-mail address, I wondered if there could seriously be TWO sockapalooozin' Elises in Brooklyn... Earlier this week, Elise complained about not having received her socks yet, and that really tipped me off that she's getting socks from overseas...

And I was right!

Maybe I should start thinking about a career as a TV call-in psychic.

I'm on a roll!

noreply@blogspirit.com () — Tue, 02 May 2006 10:30:00 +0200

I've been making some great mileage lately:-)

The striped raglan sweater got finished Sunday night, just in time for the weather to warm up... I'm quite happy with how it turned out, although the sleeves are not as long as I'd thought.

Anyhow, they may be long enough to fit Johanna in the fall. I also realized she didn't have any pants to go with the sweater, so I gotta pick up some jeans for her now- great excuse to go clothes shopping, hooray!

Last night I also turned the heel on the 2nd Alberta sock and it's almost identical to the 1st, maybe 3/4 of a row off, but who's counting?

Here's a new shot of the 'Fun' (haha) Nation Socks. They're going to be plenty long if I bind off after the yellow stripe, but that knot incident really bugged me. I sent an e-mail with evidence pix to the Regia customer service, I'll keep you posted on what's going to become of that...

Did you see I signed up for the dye-o-rama swap? I've actually done quite a bit of secret dyeing that I have not yet blogged about, and I'm lovin' it! I got my swap partner's address today, and I actually know her:-) Well, not personally, but I've read her blog before and she's cool! What a nice change being able to check out my swapee's blog!

The sockapaloooza socks will be off to the US today, and I feel comfortable about sending them after all the lovely comments I've gotten on them. THANKS!

Ef-Ohs!

noreply@blogspirit.com () — Mon, 24 Apr 2006 12:05:00 +0200

Waah! I already got an e-mail from Alison yesterday giving me my sockpal's mailing info! She's sending out the addresses for international sock exchanges a little earlier in case they're expected to travel longer. But boy, that really put some pressure on me dealing with the Mata Haris that have been spending some down time at the bottom of my socks in progress basket. So I finally drew them out again last night to see what was the problem with the different-length feet. It really wasn't a big deal at all. I think I remember doing something different on one of the places where one of the YO, k2tog spiral lines stopped on one side of the foot and I hadn't realized that left me one 4-row repeat short. Ripped the toe, put in another repeat, that's all there was to it. *sigh of relief*! And look: matching feet!

Then I steamed the picot edge and got the Mata Haris all set to be mailed. I think I'm going to send them off on May 2nd as everybody else, though- mail to the US usually takes only 4 days. What do you other international pals think?

Today I also sent off the squares for Warming Grace and I'm so looking forward to seeing what'll become of all those squares. Cynthia got such a great response for this project and I hope she can put together lots of blankies for the children. Those blankets are going to be so cool- squares coming from all over the place from all different kinds of knitters hoping to provide some sort of consolation during trips to the hospital.

Oh, and it's gotten a tad warmer here and I finished this little hat for Johanna. Looks great with her new spring coat. I actually knit this hat this time of year in 2004 when I was pregnant. Unfortunately, the hem was waaay too tight and so the hat was just lying around until now. I fiddled around and kind of undid the cast-on, picked up the stitches, knit a few more rows of ribbing and did a loose bind-off. The hem doesn't look too great now and I think I used smaller needles when I first knit the hat, but it doesn't bother me much. The colors are just great for Johanna and the yarn has some cotton in it, so it's perfect for spring.

'insert witty title here'

noreply@blogspirit.com () — Sat, 25 Mar 2006 19:55:00 +0100

hey there,

my head is a little empty right now, so I can't even produce a decent title...

Johanna's been sick again and stayed home for most of the week and I've been completely busy dealing with her and I didn't even feel like hanging in front of the screen at night reading blogs. There's a lot to catch up to!

Nevertheless, I've done my share of knitting, first of all trying to make some progress on the little striped raglan sweater. And once again, I was too eager to bind off the body in order to get to the collar and sleeves. When I had Miss J. try on the sweater, it fit her well, but I really need to add 3 more stripes at the bottom so she can wear it more than just a couple of months. (Sorry for all the crappy flash pix in this post!)

Oh, something cool happened last Friday when I took my once-monthly trip to the university library and went to get some coffee afterwards- I ran into this professor Christoph who'd ordered a knitted hat a while ago and who never got back to me. I'd already come up with a design, made a swatch and started the ribbed hem until I decided it'd all just been hot air and ripped it. Well, he said he'd had a major harddrive crash and had lost my e-mail address but still wanted the hat and gave me a little advance payment;-)

So I need some opinions on a little dilemma with my sockapaloooza socks: the second one is quite a bit smaller!
I'm sure I stuck with the notes I took for the first sock and technically, they must be the same size...at least they should be! It's probably because I freakin' stretched the first one in an attempt to squeeze my foot in it. AAAAAAARRRRRRGGGG!!!!!! I've washed them and dried them flat trying to get them both the same size, but they just went back into the old shape.

Maybe I did a few less rows on the toe... I haven't even counted them yet, as the socks are out of sight in my knitting basket- I need some 'space' before I can get into the problem again. But there's still so much time until we have to send them to our pals, I'm sure I'll figure out a way to make them proper twin socks;-)

Super sock progress:-)

noreply@blogspirit.com () — Fri, 10 Feb 2006 10:20:00 +0100

Hello my darling fellow knitter- you're probably all excited about tonight (Europe)/this afternoon (US) already;-) Geez, it's the first time I've ever known exactly when the Olympics started! I used to figure out that they're on just when I turned on the TV to watch some show I watched regularly that's been 'eaten up' by the games.

I've started my sockapalooza socks! After much debate and a first try with a folded picot edge (I now knit it with 2.0mm needles and the rest with 2.5mms) that had to be frogged, I cast on again on Tuesday and man, do those socks knit up fast! At the end of the night (and a 6CD audiobook:-o), I was ready to turn the heel.
It's so hard to pick a pattern for someone you hardly know anything about! I'm pretty sure she'll like the colors, but I tried to be somewhat on the safe side with the pattern -it's really got a certain kick (or twist;-)) to it, but it's still classic and sophisticated...

When I recently did some online research on how to knit socks on two circulars, I watched a video at knitting help.com which included such a neat tip - knitting in the yarn end in the first few stitches of the first row of a sock. Of course! Such an easy solution, one less end to weave in:-) In the case of the picot edge, I didn't even have to cut the remaining end of the cast-on tail, because it elegantly hid in the folded up seam. Aaaah, the pristine beauty of knitting...

Then I did some more jaywalking last night, I really want to finish this pair until the end of the KAL next Tuesday.

The little raglan sweater I'm making for Johanna is also growing, although I've mis-designed the neck/button line. I meant to make a diagonal opening which would've had to be in between the raglan increases, but I was unsure about how to get it right, so I thought I'd place it left of the increases- umm, of course it's a vertical line now. Duh. Oh well, it'll just be 'different'. An off-center button line...

Oh, and my friend Jytte came over yesterday to pick up her hat- it fit! The merino and the cable made it quite stretchy. She really liked the colors& the pattern and spent the rest of the afternoon sneaking off every now and then to admire her new hat in the mirror:-)

Silence and pattern search...

noreply@blogspirit.com () — Sat, 04 Feb 2006 21:20:00 +0100

Well, I'm glad nessienoodle and Carola commented on my non-participation and the button- I was getting nervous about the silence after that post!

It's definitely cool to hear that the Knitting Olympics have more participants than the actual Olympics and I'm going to be an online spectator- hopefully you're all going to have a spectacular casting-on parade as well. I want cheesy music & emotions!

Now the hard part: have you all found patterns for your sockapaloooza socks yet? I've had a few nights where I - kid you not- lay awake in the middle of night contemplating which pattern would be perfect for my pal, whom I know faaaar too little about. No blog, no further personal info besides foot measurements and color preferences. Deeeeep sigh!! So far, I've somewhat settled on Steph's Mata Hari Socks in a variegated teal yarn. I tried a folded picot edge for the first time last night and was very pleased with it, but I should've known better than to knit it with the same needle size I intended to use on the rest of the sock. Even after only a few rows of the cuff, I know the edge will be too bulky and loose and it will lean towards the outside... I'll try it again tomorrow (pix later & links later, okay?)

Sock pal

noreply@blogspirit.com () — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 12:25:17 +0100

Haah, there it is, my info... too bad my pal is blogless (is that too much said already?! :-o), it would've been nice to check out what she's into...

I'm a little confused about the sock sister's duty, my friends. Why do I send her my updates? What do I have to do as someone's sock sister?

Boo-hoo!!

noreply@blogspirit.com () — Wed, 01 Feb 2006 22:46:33 +0100

Sigh... I've been checking my email a gazillion times today! At times I got so excited, I checked every 30 seconds or so. I want my sockpal's info NOW! Stupid time zones!

The only consolation is that I'm probably going to have it 1st thing tomorrow morning. But for tonight, I give up.

I'm going to have confusing dreams of yarns, colors, PATTERNS...