What’s on my needles, and what soon will be
First of all, if anyone still hasn’t gotten their January Rockin’ Sock Club package, this post is going to contain spoilers.
In order to fill up some space before and club stuff, I’ll wax poetic about my new beauty. It happened by accident, but now I feel it was meant to be. I’ve been itching to pop out a few more scarves as the weather has turned sometimes bitterly cold. The cats have made it impossible for me to leave the porch door open for the dogs to meander into the backyard as they please, so I’ve been spending a great deal more time walking them around the neighborhood for exercise and “business” purposes.
I decided to knit Beatrice by Jane Richmond. The thought of knitting with Wool Ease Thick and Quick sent shivers up my spine so I went on a quest for a substitute. I decided on Malabrigo Chunky in the Apricot colorway because it’s bright and cheery, and comfortably outside my usual color zone. I need a little more variance. Anyhow, the yarn came in and was 1) much thinner than I thought it was going to be and 2) kind of a bland color. I’ve found that frequently when I order Malabrigo online, it looks much more flat color-wise than it appeared onscreen. I cast on anyway after doing some slight pattern modifications to try and make the smaller gauge work out. I wasn’t happy.
As I so often do, I turned to Ravelry for ideas. Lo and behold, I came across this in my queue.
I was quite taken with the pattern when I first saw it on Irishgirlieknits blog, but it had gotten lost in the seemingly endless list of things to make. Moments after printing out the pattern, Beatrice was no more and my Puddles was born.
How fitting for keeping me warm while I take the boys out to frolic. Also, check out that color variance! It totally lost the one dimensional orange thing it had going on. I’m a happy camper.
Okay, on to club goodies. I’m really feeling the patterns this month, though both incorporate elements that I’m not fond of; those being cables and bobbles. Not so much my friends, especially on socks. I like both of the patterns so much though that I’m not wasting any time before casting on for one of them.
My plans look like this-
I’m going to make Cascadia with the club yarn, Happy Go Lucky lightweight. Before I dig into that, I’m going to do Flabella with one of the Rare Gems I snagged in the BlueMoon sale last month.
I like the idea of combing the kind of watery/muddy yarn with the rainy looking sock. I feel a little guilt over not using the club color first, but this one really took hold after catching my eye. I’m going to cast on for it here in a minute, though I may not get very far as my stupid carpal tunnel syndrome has been acting up. What I pain in the ass, I tell you. I’m sure it flared up from the extreme amount of writing I did while studying for my exam (which sucked, by the way, but by comparison to the averages my brother provided for me while I was freaking out over ruining my life, my scores may not be fatally bad. I’m really walking the line, though. I ran out of time studying and my math review was basically looking up the formula for finding the circumference of a circle. I additionally ran out of time while trying to complete the math portion of the test and left off something like 10 questions. Ouch.), and was exacerbated by the large amount of knitting and spinning I tried to do once the test-monkey was off my back. I really shouldn’t knit, I suppose, but the fact that I wasn’t able to do it for so long combined with being snowed in is getting to me. Therefore I’m going to be a bad girl, pop an Aleve and knit for a bit!
