Bummer game

I've be hidden in my cave watching all the World cup Socker games. My team finally got bumped off last week. I've been cheering for the underdog, Black stars.

Yes, that's not very patriotic of me. Since they knocked-off USA in extra time. This week they played Uruguay and it was a great game neck and neck through the extra time periods. Then I had to watch the kick offs... where my team was out scored. Bummer for Africa.

Ghana losing was not the worst part of my day. When I turned away from the TV, there was a giant ant eating my cookies!!!!

OH MY!!!! LOOK at this guy!!! He took a few bite out of the cookie a Mock Socks,

and Milo Cookies.
I think he actually walked off with my specially dyed Rick socks. Don't worry I will shake them out of him soon. Otherwise he will look like this the next time:
So keep watching my gracious fans to what happens to Ali. Don't worry Sheldon is not being replaced, he's will come out of his shell soon.

Socks everywhere!

As you can see Sheldon has been hibernating during our chilly spring. (of course, the warmest spot would be in a pile of freshly knit socks.)

After our last hike of the year, we went to San Diego to get a taste of some warm water swimming.

I was afraid Sheldon would want to stay and make friends in the ocean. Thank goodness Sheldon got cold feet (huh huh huh)and insisted on returning to the Northwest.

Here I knit up a pair of Knotty gloves from the past summer's cool-aid dyed sock yarn. These babies are very cozy.

My mohair sweater finally was stitched together after sitting in the closet for a year. :)

So I had no choice but to start another sweater......yeah, a mohair hoody! But it still needs some sleeves. Now let's talk about socks!!!

Sock Madness is over for me this year. I was knocked out of round 4 due to some beautiful knee-highs... with a 120 stitch cast on! :( I would rater have stitched with 90 stitches from the start. Round 3 socks were the GAMs made with Opal rain forest yarn, snake. It had a weird heel but another interesting way to knit a sock. Round 2 was the Cool Bean socks. Yes, they look very cool, just a bit time consuming with all the stranding. Round 1 was terrible with sideways socks (happy feet yarn). About 160 stitches Kitchenered, couple hundred picked up at toes, heel and ribbing. Not to mention the lack of stretch in the sock length. No plans to make any side-winder like socks in my future.

How about some cookies? Every month I get A., Cookie. From the left is Vilai, Angee, Wanida, Sam, Bex, Cauchy and a mystery on the needles. Cookie A's book is a pretty good read, I recommend it. Next up is to spend time with Rick.

Oh, I have to thank Gherkin hand spun yarns for her gift to our Cookie A knit-a-long. As you can see she drew my name for some beautiful yarn. Perhaps there will be some matching climbing hat in Sheldon and I's future?

Here are a few more sock odds and ends. The random free pattern out on the web.

Let's hope Sheldon stays out of hibernation and does not get attached by any more snakes. I apologize to our fans for Sheldon's homebody mood these past months. I will work harder to keep him out and about .... so stay tuned.

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. :)

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.

Slippery Surfaces

Sheldon and I jumped in the car bright and early. Passports in hand, we were headed for a big international trip. A little currency in our pockets, we headed north for a few hours in hope for finding Maple flavored yarn. Before we got to the boarder we picked up the homemade cookies.... I mean cousin Nyata who brought the cookies in trade for a days adventure. We won't mention her getting her fingers stuck in the car door getting the lunch out. You could say she had a little bad luck today.
This was our big destination the Oval. Alright, so you might have caught on that Sheldon and I were out doing a little research for the winter Knitting Olympics. Yes, trying to assess the size of the event ahead of us. First we started outside the building with the beautiful architecture and artwork.

And high rafters. The wood used in this building is beautiful pine beetle infested lumber, one million board feet. The roof is 6.5 acres!
After sheldon got out of the cement, we wondered further around the building...

to the salmon pond.

Before we headed inside the Oval Cousin Nyata had to attract a bee to sting her foot and take a little attention away from Sheldon. He then made a friend.
And would not leave until he had free entry and $3 skate rentals.
This is a 400 meter rink to be used for the speed skating contest. In the middle there are 4 basketball courts, 4 badminton courts and 4 ping pong table. This place is ready for any competition, even a little knitting?
Oh, Sheldon wants you Olympians to know the time to beat in the 400 meter is 87 seconds.
Finally, after skating we wandered down to an old Japanese fishing Village, Stevenston. We were able to take in the farmers market, but not able to taste any of the international cuisine or local sock yarns as we did not have any currency.

Therefore the three of us drove back to our land of the free to fill our tummies. BUT why is it sooo difficult to enter this land??? I am always baffled by this timely event.
Thanks again to our fans out there for joining us on our field trip, please don't turn us into the knitting police for trying to assess the competition ahead in the up coming event.

NO Kidding!

Apparently my number one fan thought I staged the previous blog posting. Seriously... The green yarn was at the bottom of my drive and the yarn is still there! So I decided to make a voodoo doll to protect me. She is made from the most fabulous yarn "No Kidding." (It was free for a contest.) The yarn designer must have created it as a joke! If you are dying to get your hands on No kidding, I can hook you up with a ton of it for free. My self designed doll has quickly made friends with Sheldon, well he is a little spooked by her beauty.

Then Voodoo Girl and I went off to Stitch N Pitch. She was part of my gift bag set. If I actually used No Kidding I would get a prize. (Have you noticed I am all about free or discounted?) Here is Voodoo Girl posing at the coffee shop before the gates opened up at 5pm.

When I entered the ticket gates, I asked where the Yarn vendors were. The ticket-taker looked at me and said, "Yes, there are vendors at the top of the stairs in case you forgot something." Hmmm, are knitters forgetful? It seems my groupies forgot a FEW items, projects AND cute knit kits. I was good and knit with what I had on me.

Since Voodoo girl and I bought no souvenirs, my friend D helped me get the perfect souvenir picture of Voodoo-girl enjoying the game. (Wait, were they even playing back there?) I just know there was a game in the background interfering with our knitting conversations, someone won and someone lost. BUT I did get my prize for the joke yarn I knit. Was it worth it??

I can always use another set of needles. Seems every time I need a specific needle, I don't seem to have the correct length or size... or smoothness. In recent I have been depending on my fans and supporters. Thanks again for feeding the addiction.
Sheldon and I are going to leave the country. I hope his lack of a passport does not cause us trouble with security.

This might be a sign.

I walk to work and on my way this morning I found this along my shared drive way.

[The above image should show a wood log piece with green acrylic yarn set on top.)
What does this mean? Is it safe to return home? Should I have picked up the yarn to protect myself later in the day? I am so conflicted and confused by this siting!!!
WHAT DOES THIS ALL MEAN?????