Sockapalooza socks!

The Sockpalsocks have landed a few days ago! My pal was Linda of handknitbyafailedfeminist. Apparently they fit, so yay!

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I had a pretty crap day yesterday. See, I drive a motorcycle. On my way home from the first day of school, I got caught in a rainstorm. And like that's not enough, when I'm positively soked to the bone, it starts to hail. Oh, and one of the school books I had to go and buy turned out to be the wrong edition. And I couldn't get any sleep last night, mostly due to thunder.

Today didn't start much better; school was pretty boring, and I had to run some errands afterwards. All I'n saying is that I'm too much of a spaz to handle a backbag, a motorcycle jacket and a motorcycle helmet and to sign receits all at the same time. I made a total fool of myself, yayz. Also I was sweaty and overheated and so, so tired.

Buuut then, when I get home, this had come in the mail!



My Sockapalooza socks! Along with the gorgeous, gorgeous socks, there was this awesome post card with instructions on making a sock monkey on it and a notebook. I love notebooks!



My pal is Laura of Affiknitty. The yarn is, apparently, Cider Moon Glacier in June Carter. The colours are absolutely gorgeous, and the fit is great! I'm using way too many exclamation marks! (I love the ribbon, too. It has "I wonder who's knitting for me?" written on it, and these really cute balls of yarn.)



Picots! Slipped stitches! Swirlies! The colours! Eeee!

(That is to say, THANK YOU LAURA YOU ARE MY NEW FAVOURITE PERSON.)

FO: Sockpal Socks

Pattern: stitch pattern from Handpaint Highlight socks in One-Skein Wonders, otherwise fudged together by me
Yarn: Colinette Jitterbug in Toscana, one skein
Needles: 2,5mm bamboo DPNs (actually four bamboo DPNs and one aluminium, because I'm a klutz)

That pictue is truly awful, but it's the best I have of the completed socks.

I had to fudge around with these quite a bit. I'd knit with Jitterbug once before, and didn't have any problems with yardage. However, I'd heard a lot of people say there wasn't quite enough for a proper pair, and my Sockpal had size 10 feet. To solve my problem, I did a provisional cast-on, knit the heel and down to the toe, and picked up for the leg. Turns out that I needn't worry, really. The foot on these babies is a bit over ten inches long, and when folded in half at the heel the leg pretty much matches. The scraps on the table are all the yarn I had left.

Now, the smart among you might notice that this is a pattern with slipped stitches. Slipped stitches for elongated vees, especially when they're slipped over two rounds. Anyone seeing the problem here? Why yes, the vees run in opposite directions on the foot and on the leg. I'm calling it a design element.

Now, the yarn. I'm terribly fond of Jitterbug, mostly because it's the only "fancier" sock yarn I have access to. When I bought the Toscana, I thought it was a nice, earthy green-brown with a few splashes of colour. Yeah, well, no. I still rather like it, and hope the recipient does too. (And doesn't mind the minuscule amount of purple the yarn has. I swear I didn't notice!)

I've actually knit this sock three times. I ended up ripping the first foot I had completed, because my gauge was way too tight and the sock had a strange pointy toe. I also had to knit enough bits of the leg over and over again to make up a whole one. I'm still not sure if I got it entirely right. I hope the socks aren't too narrow and too long like I'm afraid they are.

Also, as I was a twit I didn't remember to look up a good bind-off. I did a super-loose suspended bind-off with larger needles, and it seems to have worked.

(Random detail: the knits on the ribbing are twisted. I like the way it looks, and when stretched, it sometimes looks sort of like p2-k1-p1-k1 ribbing instead of the k2-p2 it actually is.)

High as a kite

I´m finally back from my exile to our summer place. School starts in a week or so, and of course the summer has been cold and damp until now.

I took the Sockpal Sock to a Harry Potter line party. (Geekflag!) I had to make dad drive me to the nearest resonably sized city, but boy was it worth it. I was twenty-third in line, and probably among the first 150 to get their hands on it in Finland. They started selling the books at 2:01am, but only in six places nationwide. (Our 2am is the same as Britain's midnight.) There were roughly 75 of us there.



The Sock felt that I really should be paying more attention to it than to a stupid book, but I ignored it and read the book straight through. (I was finished 26 hours after I got it in my paws, but actual reading time was more like 16 hours.) It was rather good, wasn't it? I didn't like the epilogue all that much, but man were the names hilarious.



The best thing about the summer being all windy and cold was this:



Kites! I love kites!



(That's me trying to keep it in the air. I managed for quite a while, but then of course the kite nose-dived straight into a birch.)

Can anyone tell me what this is? How about you there, in the back?



Why yes indeed, those are the guts of a typewriter! Specifically, of my "portable" Adler. (I got it from a recycling centre for three euros last summer.) The Sock found it work very well as a lounger.



The Sock also got to see (and hear) some motor sports: Neste Oil Rally in Jyväskylä, Finland. I went with my dad. It was quite a road trip, and I had a ton of fun. (Except when I noticed that all the needles had come off from the sock. Thank god for life lines. I don't even usually use them with socks.)



But the time for the Sock to leave finally came, and I shipped it off yesterday. (Better FO post forthcoming.)



(I added stuff after taking this, but nothing major.)

Also, eye candy.



That's my button stash. Everything, including the bowl, is from a trift store or a recycling centre. I'm guessing that the lot have cost less than two euros in total. Gotta love trift stores. (My favourite is the huge on in the centre. So lovely.)

The Adventures of the Sockpal Socks

I lose at updating! \o/

I spent a week in Greece in the beginning of June. Athens=total geekgasm. We only spent a day there, and then went to this wee island. We were apparently just about the only tourists there. :D (Island's called Agistri, and is apparently fairly popular with the Greek.) Sidenote: though we only spent a week there, I took over a thousand pictures.



Then I spent three weeks working. It was supremely boring but hey, yarn money! (Mostly I crawled under desks and wrote down the serial number of every computer. That was the fun part.)

Then there was Midsummer. I took the Sockpal Sock to see the midnight sun on the longest day of the year. (Actually this is sort of the one-o´clock-in-the-morning sun, but still.)



The photo's from our summer place. We have this tiny cottage two hours away from our house by a little lake, surrounded by cows.

The sock also got to see a traditional Finnish Midsummer bonfire, naturally from a safe distance. We skipped the traditional getting obscenely drunk part, though.



Before returning to the urban environment, the Sock and I took a moment to smell the flowers. (For some reason, I think the Sock looks amazingly good in this one.)



I've finished the first sock, and cast on for the second one after serious procrastination. I'll only manage to mail them on August 6th, so they might be a little late. I hope the Sockpal doesn't mind.

I'm also re-knitting a seamless top-down raglan I was working on a while back. I had finished the body and most of a sleeve, but then I realised that I despised the sweater's guts and ripped it all out.



(The sweater's the pink lump in the background. In front of it there's a cup of tea, because I love tea. Happens to be my favourite kind of tea, too, just like Earl Grey but with lemon.)

I'm going to spend the next three weeks at the summer place, with minimal to no internet access. I'm taking the pink sweater, the Sockpal Socks, the yarn for a cardigan and a lace scarf with me. And an insane amount of books.