Like many other knitters, I was at Sock Summit this past weekend. I drove up with my whole family and we stayed with some friends just outside of Portland so my trip was a mix of Sock Summit stuff and visiting friends and family. I don't feel like I got as submerged in Sock Summit as some.
I took "Knitting without Wool" with Amy Singer. I got to see a bunch of socks knit with nonwool yarns that I had heard of but never seen. Wick, for one. I'm glad now that I never tried it for socks because it is very thick and I like my socks to be on the thinner side. We also learned a stretchy bind-off that will be in an article in the next Knitty. Ironically, the socks I was working on at Sock Summit and the pair I started on the drive home are both top-down. Generally, I knit all of my socks toe-up! I'll have to do a pair next to try that bind-off.
I didn't take many photos at Sock Summit, but here's one of the cool pendulum in the convention center, of Freecia at lunch with a giant pita at Nicholas Restaurant and of the luminary panel.
On Sunday before the panel I walked around the marketplace a bit with Cookie and Anne Hanson, who I had never met before and who was very nice. She was working on some gorgeous orange socks (seen in her most recent blog post) that were making me sad that I can't knit with wool. Ah, cootton, why can't you take color like wool? I did do a bit of shopping, but not much. Like Stitches, the nonwool, nonlace options are few and far between.
Here are some individual shots of the yarn and of the square needles and crochet hook that I got.
Anabel told me that she tired the square circular needles in size 0 and she wasn't crazy about them for reasons that totally sounded like I wouldn't like them either. In the heat of the moment at the marketplace I forgot that and bought the exact same needles and am having the exact same problem: the cord is too flexible and the join too bumpy for magic loop. The actual knitting is fine but when it comes time to pushing the stitches back up to the tip of the needle to work on them it's incredibly time consuming and a big pain. I am considering emailing the store where I got them and asking if I can trade them for something larger with a shorter cord because I think they'd be great for actually knitting in the round. I haven't tried the hook yet, but I have a couple of their square hooks in larger sizes (this one is an F) so I expect to like it.
The yarns are, from left to right, Sockina, Kollage Luscious and BMFA Sock Candy. They're all cotton blends. Luscious and Sock Candy both just have elastic and Sockina has Polyamide and Acrylic. i'm looking forward to knitting with all of them but have to settle on a pattern, and finish the sock I started on the trip home!
That would be the Bosnian Toes & Turkish Heels sock by Lucy Neatby (Ravelry link) from Knitter's Magazine. I usually just get Interweave unless I see something I really want to make in one of the other magazines. My aunt, however, gets Interweave, Knitters and Knit n Style and has decided that she doesn't like any of them. She gave me a big stack of Knittters and Knit n Style and a book she doesn't want any more!
I need to go through them, decide which ones have stuff I want to make, read the articles I want to read and then I will probably be sharing the wealth at BobaKnit.
I was considering calculating my stash number again but I think it's a bad idea. I have been mostly working on gift projects with yarn that came from outside of the stash so I don't think I've taken much out of the stash recently. The Lucy Neatby socks are going quickly, though, so that yarn should be taken out soon. I don't think I'm going to make my goal this year of using up 5 more miles of yarn. That sounds ludicrous to me right now since I just bought yarn and Linda destashed some cotton and silks to me. Oops.
the sheep free knitter 