Confessions of a Socka-Pal-LOSER

I even bought a book and everything!

The Sockapalooza-4 deadline draweth nigh, and I must confess that I will cross the finish line, but not with brilliance.

I joined up with high hopes. I dyed special yarn. I bought a book of sock patterns. My pal was going to get a brilliant pair of socks. I was going to leave mysterious and witty messages on her blog.

Well...

I sold off her yarn. Never opened the book. She doesn't have a blog. And I never contacted her. I consoled myself on that last point with the reminder that my pal never contacted me either, but then my pal did. About two weeks ago. Hmmph.

So if you have a blog, you are not my pal. Ditto that if you have heard from your pal. It wasn't me. I didn't send you a care package, or a note, or leave chocolates on your pillow. And you are not getting the latest craze in sock patterns done in thread-like yarn on itty bitty needles.

BUT

You will get a lovely pair of well-executed stockinette stitch socks in my much-coveted Butterscotch Rowan Pure Wool DK that was dyed by me. They will be done on time and in the mail as soon as I get back from camp on August 4. They will arrive accompanied by a nice skein of sock yarn, also dyed by me, a card, and a set of stitch markers.

So I'm not a total loser.

I'm away for a bit, but my shop is stocked with all kinds of things, and you are welcome to browse and even to buy, as long as you don't mind waiting a bit for your item(s) to ship. I just posted two more offerings of the elann.com Cash Tweed. Each is a 100gram skein currently available...until it is not. The last two flew away very quickly.

REDWOOD FOREST:


RIVENDELL:


PS. I got my gold pirate-tooth today, and it feels great!

PS2. I will actually take pictures up at camp this year so that y'all can see how glorious it is.

Stupid Plastic Tooth

I'm longing for two things these days: autumn, and a new tooth.

Autumn isn't happening for a while, so I'm dreaming about it with dye. This one is called: The Leaves Dream of Autumn. (the leaves aren't alone...)



The tooth is happening on Thursday, so that feels somewhat in reach. Right now I have a stupid plastic tooth instead of one of my upper molars. I hate it. Last week I spent the proverbial about-as-much-fun-as-two-hours-in-the-dentist's-chair two hours.

I brought my iPod since there is only so much classic 1970's music I can stand, and that's all that plays at my dentist's office. At least we can laugh about it since she and I are almost the same age. Depressing Harry Chapin ballad reminds her of depressing Dan Fogelburg ballad, and just as we are laughing at the comparison, the Fogelburg dirge comes on. That really gets us laughing.

If we were laughing, it couldn't have been that bad, right? In some ways not. I like my dentist. I really do. Having suffered a lifetime of severe dental anxiety (with reason), this dentist has redeemed a lot of that for me by being who she is. She has a beautiful new office with comfy chairs and NO shaming, humiliating, or disgusting dental posters on her walls. That alone endeared her to me pretty quickly. And she is kind. And gentle.

So she kindly, gently drilled and grinded my molar for almost two hours last week, without anaesthesia (the tooth is dead anyway). I took my Xanax and listened to my iPod, and I survived. But I left with a temporary plastic tooth that feels like a clunker in my mouth. I can feel the edges of it. It doesn't feel like a tooth at all, and my tongue won't leave it alone. I liked the broken tooth better.

I finished sock one in the hand-dyed and spun yarn I bought at etsy. You can check out the yarn and link to her shop HERE.



And I dyed my second skein of the elann Cash Tweed last night in a colour I'm simply calling Blaze. More dreaming of autumn. I love this colorway. I will definitely be doing a few more like this one. And keeping one for myself while I'm at it.



Man-Boy demonstrates the difference between Cash Tweed before and after dyeing. Hopefully you can also see how much fuller and fluffier it becomes with washing.

If Frankenstein Wore Socks...

They'd definitely be Lime-Green and Purple stripedy...



Don'tcha think?

At Long Last Blog

Reasons I have not been blogging:

Can't be bothered
Too damn hot
Too damn lazy
Too many distractions
Too many people in my house (read: kids home for summer holidays)

In other news...

Catbookmom came to visit, and that was FUN! Catbookmom, Lunadog, and plain 'ol Jayne went out for a pub dinner and then back to my house on the HOTTEST DAY EVER. Seriously. It was the hottest day in Vancouver's recorded weather history. Hotter than the gates of hell. Hot.
But we still had a riot.

It was also too hot to take pictures, but I do have two from the day that CBM came and spent an afternoon and evening chez See-Jayne-Knit.

Good pic of CBM....and uh...Jayne having a Forest Gump photo moment.

Ah...that's better. CBM brought a knitting project that she was knitting in yarn dyed by me! My yarn had come back home again. And it was looking very pretty as it Sunray'ed along.

What I'm Knitting

I decided that my sock pal was getting the infamous Butterscotch socks that have set so many knitters to drooling. They are nearly done. I will make the deadline! More on this later.


I am also knitting myself a pair of socks in some lovely and funky hand dyed and spun yarn from a fellow etsian (how Jayne spends her money). The yarn is called creamsicle, and she spun it with little coils peppered in there that give it a fun texture. More on this later.



What I am Dyeing:

I bought some of elann.com's new and limited Cash-Tweed yarn to see how it would dye. Colour choices were very limited by the time I got there, but I still got some useful yarn to play around with. Unless I hit a colorway that I absolutely adore, every batch will be a one of a kind. So if you see something you like, I wouldn't wait.

This is my first effort. I dyed two balls tied together, so the put-up is 100g/392yds, and the yarn bloomed and got much softer with dyeing. I'm calling it Stormy Seas. The colour came out rich and saturated, and that warm coffee brown is really something else (love that). I don't think I will repeat this one, so like I said, if it makes your heart go pitty pat...


A particularly lovely batch of Copper Blaze Kid Mohair:



And a new colorway in Blue Face Leicester that makes my heart go Pitty-Pat! I'm calling it Sun Kissed.



All these are currently in shop with lots of others and a whole lotta stitch marker sets. I didn't know that I would be in the stitch marker biz until I listed a few and they took off. Now it is a fairly large part of what I do. Who knew?

Breakfast of Champions

Okay, I realize that I've been a slack-ass blogger these days. It's just too freakin' hot around here. I think it's finally time to admit that I'm not really a summer person. I love sunshine, but heat makes me cranky.

I used to spend the summer outdoors, getting a great tan and, well, getting a great tan. I think I've probably had my last tan. The last few years I've noticed that I don't tan, I blotch. My skin itches and changes, and I'm thinking this might not be altogether healthy for me. I do love to swim outdoors though, so I'm looking forward to long swims in the lake that is about twenty minutes away from where I live.

In case you haven't heard, there's a Simpsons movie coming out soon. Some 7-11 stores have converted into Kwik-E-Marts to promote the movie. Apparently these are very rare, and the 7-11 a few miles from here is the only one in Canada. Or one of a very few. The story keeps changing. I go there to use the post office sometimes, and last time I went I had to pick up some junk for my kids, who are major Simpsons fanatics. No matter what movie, cultural event, or life issue comes up in casual or even serious conversation, my kids say the same thing: "Oh! There's a Simpsons about that..."

You'd be amazed at the education they've received, courtesy of Homer, Marge, Bart and the gang.



IT CAME AND IT TOOK OVER THE WHOLE HOUSE!!!

This yarn business has taken over my house. Some days, I beat it back with a broom into dim corners and downstairs, where it lurks just waiting for me to turn my back so that it can burst out all over the place again.

It has a whole bedroom to itself, half the kitchen and sometimes more, most of the dining room, part of the living room, and quite often a good deal of the family room.

I bought myself a tool box for my stitch marker supplies. Yup, one of those manly red tool-boxes. I love it. Now I can keep everything for stitch markers in one place instead of in ten. Things have a way of creeping out though...

During the cooler months, I dry my yarn in the room where the furnace is. Things dry in a day or so there. Lately, our furnace never comes on, so I'm drying in the dining room, where it is warm all day and all night.


So Proud I could just Burst!

I love love love this colorway. Haven't been able to get to the lake on account of Hayley's cold, so I've been beating the heat by staying inside and dyeing up all kinds of fun new colorways. This is one of my favorite yarns yet. I'm calling it Borealis.



Not much happening on the knitting front, but I will post a Sockapalooza update tomorrow.