Saturday, September 26, 2009

Broken Adventures Linked Together

Without fail, Sheldon and I have been taking in lots of adventure. I don't even know where to start! (yes, the knitting continues to squeeze into life.) A week ago a bunch of crazy knitters filled a room at a local pub on a Friday night. I think the regulars were a little surprised to see such a crowd.... I was. The unexpected thing was the yarn shop that organized it gave away fabulous door prizes.
As you can see this beautiful skein of yarn was a different shade of green than I would have selected, but they included a pattern in the gift bag. Yep, I was a happy Pub knitter. I can't wait to see how this gathering evolves over the next few months.
The next day, Sheldon and I rounded up a few more knitters, packed up our gear and needles to head out of town in the rainy weather. We heard great weather was coming in time for a Sunday afternoon knit-spot. Sheldon and I set up the tent in the rain, got some zzzz-s and awoke to a frozen tent. The temperature had apparently dropped to -2 degrees Celcius,(28F) in the night. Brrr.... crunch, crunch, we knocked the ice off and packed up the tent. Then we got moving into the early AM.

YEp! We spotted the 9100 ft destination. The top looked a little crumbly, but nothing hard-hatted knitters and a hard shelled turtle could not arrive at with mad climbing skills and yarn.
Sheldon was a little shaking getting up the summit blog. He was much happier sitting on top taking in the scene, although the wind kept up from knitting up a storm. (I guess we kind of did not want a storm at this point in the trip.)
After the wind blew us back down the mountain, we finally got our knitting break by this creek. As you can tell the sun was making the day much warmer than this frozen morning. Sheldon was even sunning himself on a rock near the creek. (He is there take a closer look.)
The below pair of socks is a result of our true to spirit "Knit-Out"

These are the no name socks for this months Sockamania knit along. A pretty quit rib style pattern made with Happy Feet. AND wouldn't you know it, hot off the needles and they were quickly on a naked footed friend's feet. You see my friend Dragonlady had a fire-y party, good food and roaring company. At the party I was able to off load 9 pairs of socks!

These dragons grab up my new Cookie A Devon socks soon after the kitchner. There was NO WAY I was going to lose a knitting hand to grab them back for me and Sheldon almost become dragon food. Kind of a bummer those socks are gone because there were made from the KnitPicks Alpaca/merino wool naked sock yarn. Dragonlady actually did the Kool-Aid dying with Berry/cherry combo and then an over dye of grape. So these dragons had better really enjoy the one of a kind socks!
I may have failed to mention before off-loading some of the sock stash I attended a knit out. The attendance WAS profitable as you can see here:
The goody bag included lion brand Wool-ease and size 8 straight needles, Addi turbo size 8 needles and some Stoller & Stahl BIG super wash yarn, and Jojoland Melody yarn to make the included pattern. Let's just say it was a great day.
Here I leave you with an unedited video of Sheldon's knitting group. It really was a beautiful day just a tad bit winding for knitting on the summit.

Did you notice the massive drop off? It is ok if you did not look, it is a little scary for some knitters.

Here is a shout out to my fans all around the world, including the Mediterranean.
I hope to be back before the end of the month with one more sock made the wrong way. It is made from Sock Summit stash. :)

Monday, September 7, 2009

Summits, Superheros and Sunshine

Man! I don't even know where to start. August is gone and there is still so much of a story to tell. The month started with Sheldon dragging me to this location in Portland.
He wanted to help set a Guinness Book of Record. So we dusted off our straight needles and grabbed some non-sock yarn, YES, that was a challenge around here. We did not hurt ourselves with the straight needle sticks, and we DID help break the record of knitters knitting consecutively for 10 minutes. Cool, eh?
As you may have guessed we were at Sock Summit. Sheldon dove right into the yarn.

He was happy to not be a cow, Milk yarn. What will they think of next? Turtle shell yarn? Or is that Chitin in the Tofutsies yarn? (Just kidding Sheldon, Chitin is shrimp & Crab shell.) We looked at many beautiful yarn and kept the purchases to a minimal level.

Although we kind of broke the one skein budget.

And had to sell my mountaineering tent the following week. Hey... wait.. look on the bright side, without the tent I will stay home a little more and get more knitting done, right? Beside I only bought about a years supply of sock yarn.

It was cool that there were ball winders at the Summit. Sheldon wanted to take a spin on this one but instead settled on just rolling in their baskets of fiber.

We eventually jumped a train away from the piles of sock yarn and went to meet famous people like.....BOB!
How cool was it? Sheldon really liked meeting Bob and thought he was really awesome. The party Bob threw was really amazing, complete with gift bags. Next meet-up, Sheldon is mandating hand knit socks to hang with the big dogs. :( Work is never done for Sockergirl, unless Sheldon learns to knit.

To work off the sock yarn high, Sheldon and I took a bike ride with about 10,000 others.

Are we supposed to on the freeway? Did we take a wrong turn?

Really? Its gone? NO regrets, right? Fair trade? hmmm...
.....just quit thinking about it...
After that weekend the Sunshine cleared. Cookie A. Rocks! She signed my book and touched this pair. What a cool gal! Should I ever wash these socks?
You fans might have thought I was under the weather only knitting one pair of socks for August. You were RIGHT! It was not the swine flu but almost as deadly, Acyrlicitis. The disease causes a person to knit large non-wool item for future superheros.

This project started with 14 stitches and ended with 728 stitches. By row 100 I had about 500 stitches on the needles, and I kept thinking about how that would equal 9 rows on a sock. Then each color change should have been half a sock. A crochet hooks was even to used to add the webbing. Can you see how painful this red heart blanket was for me? I am telling you this superhero better take this item off to college in 18 years!
For now Sheldon enjoys the web, pretending to be a superturtle and I hope you fans all over the world do too! Let's hope September brings us three pairs of completed socks and some.