I finished the Zig Zag Diamonds Socks while watching the Illini lose to Northwestern on Saturday. Well, at least one of us was successful.

Details:
Pattern: Zig Zag Diamonds, by Jeannie Cartmel
Yarn: Wollmeise Sockenwolle 100% Superwash, in “Guide to Galaxy”
Needles: Addi Turbos, size US 1, 2 circs
Started: October 15, 2009
Completed: November 14, 2009
Comments: This would have been a quicker knit if I hadn’t messed up the pattern on the second sock. It was nice to have plenty of yarn for that 3rd sock, though. I’m not loving the way the pattern starts straightaway after the cast-on, even though it’s a 1×1 ribbed stitch pattern. The pattern and yarn were the September shipment for the Loopy Ewe sock club. It also happened to fit the theme for the Sock Knitters Anonymous Sockdown! for October, which is the main reason they got cast on and done so soon.

They are cozy socks. Now, what to do with that extra one?

For the last couple of months, I’ve been engaging in a little experiment. At the end of August, I challenged myself to avoid purchasing any yarn until my birthday (at the end of January). When I decided to go to Stitches West, I moved the goal posts to the first day of Stitches.

And then Jenny of Stash and Burn talked about Cold Sheeping, a great term for Not Buying Yarn. This was prompted by a Cold Sheep thread on the Ravelry group, which I finally got around to reading right after buying a sock kit at a farm in October. Technically, K bought it for me, and I wasn’t even trying to weasel out of my own challenge! (Also, I’m knitting the socks for K’s classroom, anyway.)

I made two exceptions to the No Buying Yarn rule: (1) the Loopy Ewe Sock Club packages, which bill for each shipment rather than up front, and which I committed to back in the Spring, and (2) a possible extension of the Tempted @ 3AM club, which did take an upfront payment, and I can’t tell you how nifty it is to get yarn in the mail that you paid for so long ago it’s like the yarn is coming for free.

Other than that, I’ve been knitting out of my stash. Meanwhile, people have been confessing their falls off the Cold Sheep Wagon. So, I wanted to share a Cold Sheep Success Story.

It started out with me wanting to knit up a Jackalope for K. It was supposed to be a surprise, but that’s another tale. The stumbling block was a lack of rabbit-colored yarn. I have several single skeins of Cascade 220 in red, orange, green, and blue, but no brown or gray. But I do have something: several skeins of white (which I didn’t want to use for the body, because I want to use white for the horns; also, a jackalope is a desert animal, not a snow animal!) and a whole lot of tea.

I brewed a really big pot of tea:

That’s an 8-quart pot (not quite full) and 12 bags of Tetley’s British Blend.

Meanwhile, I soaked a hank of white Cascade 220 in my favorite pasta pot:

Once the tea boiled (over, in fact, which is why I ended up scrubbing the stovetop, which might have made K happier than the finished jackalope will), I pulled out the teabags and very gently added the wet yarn:

And then I waited. I waited about half an hour, but it was still steaming, so I left it until steam stopped coming off of it, then very carefully poured off some of the tea into the sink until I could even more carefully take out the yarn and rinse it under the faucet. I rinsed with warm water until it ran clear, gently squeezed out some of the water, wrapped it in my old Swim Team towel (it’s old, and also dark blue, effectively hiding any tea stains), and finally hung it up to dry in my backyard:

I left it there all day, then brought the nearly dry yarn inside to hang over a chair back overnight. The next morning, I took a comparison photo with some white yarn exactly like the original:

It came out a very nice desert rabbit brown, I think. And I didn’t even need a separate set of pots. 

I’ve been alternating working on the jackalope with working on my third second Zig-Zag Diamonds sock. Progress on the sock is slow, but I’ve turned the heel and picked up the pattern for the foot in the right place this time. At this point, I really just want to be done with it.

I still haven’t cast on for the third Zig Zag Diamonds sock. I have been knitting, but it’s one of the Sooper Seekrit projects that I can’t share yet.

I’ve also been reading my knitterly mailing list email, where I found out about the Stitch n Beach knitting cruise. It sounds fantastic, except for the fact that it departs from the east coast on Friday, February 26 – the same weekend as Stitches West. Think there’ll be one departing from Long Beach the same weekend as Stitches East?

In any case, I’ll be in Santa Clara that weekend, at my second-ever Stitches. (The first one was five years ago!) I signed up for four classes:

• Tradition! with Candace Eisner-Strick
• Beyond the Rectangle: Fun Shapes for Shawls and Wraps with Sandi Rosner
• Spinning for Knitting with Merike Saarniit
• Suitable Seams with Judy Pascale

I was heavily tempted by the Swedish North Halland Pullover class with Beth Brown-Reinsel, but I’m not staying through Sunday afternoon. I’m planning to drive up on Friday morning, and then back down on Sunday afternoon. The last time I went to Stitches, I did something similar, driving up early Thursday morning to make it to the Opening Day events. While I’m sad to miss the Market Preview on Thursday evening, it’s a fair trade-off for not paying for a third night in the hotel.

I am ridiculously excited about the whole thing. I’ve been catching up on back episodes of Cogknitive, and I just listened to her 4-part outtakes on her trip to last year’s event. I was still such a brand-new knitter the last time I went, and I didn’t have any knitting friends yet. Now, I’m looking forward to meeting people from Ravelry and podcasts and blogs. I can hardly wait.

One day, I will learn to look carefully at a sock before weaving in the ends. Yesterday, it seems, was not that day.

I had just finished watching Glee while doing the toe decreases and grafting the final seam. I neatly wove in the ends, turned the sock right side out, and put on my snazzy pair of socks.

Something didn’t look right. It took a minute to figure out what it was (and move past the Denial stage). The patterning didn’t match.

Somehow, on the second sock, I zigged when I should have zagged after the heel turn.

Wollmeise comes in a extra-large skein: 150g instead of the usual 100. My finished sock weighs 42g, and I have over 70g left. I would rather knit a whole third sock than rip out that woven in end, frog, and reknit the entire foot with the kinked-up yarn. I’m just not quite ready to cast on yet.

The County Fair opened this weekend, and I made a trip over there this morning. Since I was by myself, I could spend lots of time poking around the Tapestry displays. I thought it would take some time to find my entry, but it was pinned up in a case right near the door.

Looks like I got a Second Place ribbon, but I’m a little puzzled about the ribbons.  I hunted down the other entries in the Infant Handknit Sweater category.

All red ribbons, except one.

As always, I’m mystified by the entire arrangement of the Tapestry entries, but they seem to have had a display designer this year who was particularly unclear on the concept.  The knitted and crocheted afghans were almost all displayed folded up.

This looks like a lovely sampler afghan, but we get no idea what it looks like.

The tag on this one says something about a boat.

This is Eeyore.  I know this because it says so on the tag.

Mystery character!

Total mystery pattern.

Most of the afghans were on the floor of displays, under beautiful hanging quilts.

Next year, I’d like to enter some socks.  I knit socks more often than anything, but I always want to wear them right away! There were quite a few socks entered, and I’m not sure how many subcategories there were.

I don’t know how they decided it would be a good idea to cover up the color on the cuffs and display the stockinette feet.

This looks like Embossed Leaves with some added embellishment on the cuffs.

Entrelac socks, I think.  I don’t know if that was a separate category or not.  I didn’t see any other entrelac socks, although there was a Lady Eleanor stole on display.

I think these are really neat.  And there has got to be a story behind these socks:

There were also lots of adult and child sweaters on display, and some lovely shawls.  After much searching, I located the Best in Show for Hand Knit Clothing.  According to the tag, it was entered in the Shawls/Wraps category.

I’m sure it’s fantastic.  It would have been nice to be able to see it.

This is why there has been no knitting around here:

Yes, it is all about the cross-stitch around here, at least until Santa is no longer headless.

After leaving Arcadia Knitting with a heavy heart and no new yarn, I had to go back down to the Convention Center to pick up my backpack before going back uptown to my sister’s place.  It was getting late in the afternoon, and I was a little concerned about getting to the bag check before it closed for the day, so I took one of the three cab rides I took during my time in Chicago.

I had stuffed my backpack full of ARCs picked up at the Exhibits, you see.  It was much to heavy to carry all over the place.  And the bag check was free.

Backpack on, it was back to the Loop, then back on the El, and back to my sister’s place to change for the Newbery Banquet.  And then back on the El, back to the Loop, just in time to miss the last shuttle bus. Back in the cab.

I arrived a little bit after the doors opened, completely missing the (cash bar) cocktail hour.  I was seated with a couple of lovely ladies from the incoming Caldecott committee (one of whom works near my in-laws in the San Gabriel Valley), and three very nice gentlemen.  At the first table in my line of sight to the podium sat Elizabeth Bird, whose recap of the whole evening is a must-read.

The food was interesting, but the speeches were fantastic.  And after dinner was the receiving line.  I was behind Elizabeth, and after a few minutes, I realized that directly behind me was Linda Sue Park.  I gushed over Keeping Score a little bit.  And then I had reached the first person in line.

Neil Gaiman, me, and my Storm Cloud Shawlette, knit out of Tempted Handpainted Glam Grrl.

Everyone was so gracious to the gazillion library-folk streaming through the line. Well, given that Neil Gaiman was at one end of the line and Ashley Bryan was at the other end, maybe “streaming” isn’t the word for it. I got to have a very nice chat with Beth Krommes about toddlers and Goodnight Moonand gushed a bit to Kathi Appelt about The Underneath. I told her that I thought of it as “stealth fantasy”. And Jacqueline Woodson complimented me on my shawlette.

A fabulous evening, but a late one. I made it back to my sister’s place around midnight for another 4-hours-of-sleep night.

Why did I have to get up so early on Monday? So I could do this:

Gaiman was going to be signing at 9 AM at the HarperCollins booth. Two CTA buses got me to the Convention Center by 7 AM. I staked out a spot near the Exhibit Hall entry closest to the booth. The bemused Security Guards told me I’d be waiting a while. I sat down on the carpet and pulled out my travelling sock. The young lady next to me arrived with her mother about 5 minutes later, and a guy arrived about 10 minutes after that. By the time the HarperCollins employees starting showing up, the line had stretched across the room and was confusing quite a few people, who thought there was now a line just to get into the Exhibit Hall. A very nice HarperCollins representative brought out the signs around 8:30. The one in my hand says, “neil gaiman line starts here”. There was another sign for the end of the line. Other than some drama with a fellow who showed up around 8:30 and wanted to jump the line because he had a meeting to run, everyone was very friendly. There was another sock knitter a few people back, and several people commented on the sock.

One even took a picture and posted it to twitter. Please excuse my hair in that photo. It looks better in this one, which was also posted to twitter, but the sock is hiding.

I wanted to get a picture of Neil holding the sock (a la Steph), but the very first thing he said upon arriving was that he was not going to do posed photos, as that was what had held up the line at his previous signing. He did, however, autograph my “line starts here” sign as well as my book. (I cannot express how annoyed I am with myself for not bringing my stamp packet.)

Another couple of sessions, and that was it for my ALA. I crashed at my sister’s around 6 PM and woke up at 7 the next morning, enough time to pack up, go to Joy’s for another lunch, and get to the airport almost exactly one hour before my scheduled departure.

The next day, K, Little Miss, and I drove down to Sea World for a couple of days, followed by a couple of days of laundry and other chores before returning to work.

There hasn’t been much knitting since we’ve been back, just a little bit of test-knitting that isn’t bloggable, and it’s going to be All Cross-Stitch All the Time around here before long.  But maybe poor neglected Miss Honeychurch will finally get some quality time.

My Conference Schedule – a masterpiece of planning that involved the official Event Planner, my datebook, a bunch of printed e-mails, and an Excel spreadsheet – got all messed up quite quickly. A program I’d been looking forward to on Saturday afternoon was canceled, leaving me with a block of free time. I hopped a shuttle bus to the hotels and went for a walk.

I walked by Millennium Park, home of a fountain I had just seen on Samantha Brown’s Great Weekends:

Y’know, I lived in Chicago for the first half of the year 2000, and this whole Millennium Park business hadn’t even been built yet.

I ogled the architecture, one of the things I miss:

I have no idea what that building is.

And I made my way down to Loopy Yarns, where my Only Buy Things You Can’t Get At Home rule allowed me to buy two skeins of Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Sock in Loopy’s exclusive colorway. (Also, a pen with a tape measure on it and a Stix Fix kit.)

I was really surprised by how small the selection of Lorna’s Laces was, since it’s a local dyer. I would have loved to pick up some Helen’s Lace, but I learned that Loopy recently stopped carrying it. Bummer.

I was also a little surprised that the prices on Shepherd Sock were higher than the prices at my LYS, which are already a little higher than MSRP. And that’s before Chicago’s crazy taxes.

Since I went to Loopy on Saturday, I didn’t make it there on Sunday. Instead, on Sunday, I took a trip up to my old neighborhood. I admired the rainbow pylons:

True story: when I rented my Chicago apartment over a quick trip as an about-to-graduate college senior, I had no idea that I was a block east of Boystown. Then, the day I moved in, my dad I drove past these pylons.

After a stroll down Memory Lane North Halstead, I went to my favorite restaurant for lunch. You can’t get these vegetable rolls anywhere else (except their other location in Chicago):

I also popped into my favorite bookstore for a copy of The Graveyard Book, which I wanted to have signed, and my old hardware store, where I finally found some of those vinyl caps that (when combined with stretchy cord) make fantastic dpn holders. Finally, I headed up to Arcadia Knitting, where I was seriously disappointed (again!) in the tiny selection of Lorna’s Laces. I debated buying some LL Angel in the “Go Bears!” colorway, but I don’t see myself knitting angora anytime soon. Alas, I left empty-handed.

The silence around here has been for one big reason: I was on vacation.  And it was lovely.  I had several days at home (“staycation”), one of which happened to be either our fourth or first wedding anniversary (depending on who’s doing the counting).  Then, I took off for Chicago.  I got my bamboo dpns through security with no problem, and I did this on the flight from Burbank to Phoenix:

A toe in the very soft Artsygal Stripes.

I had about three hours between flights in Phoenix, which turned out to be a very good thing.  I was booked on a different airline for the second leg of my flight.  When I got off the little plane from California, the only monitors in the terminal were for my original airline, and I had no idea where to go.  Eventually, someone told me I needed to be in Terminal 2.  Since I didn’t know which terminal I was in, this wasn’t entirely helpful, but I went with it.

I had to go outside, get on a bus, ride to Terminal 2, go through Security again, and find my new gate.  Bless the Airport Volunteer who warned me which bus would go to the Terminals and which bus went to the parking garages first.

And on the flight from Phoenix to Chicago, I did this:

A very simple improvised pattern for a toe-up 2×2 rib sock.  At this point, I was about ready to turn the heel.  Unfortunately, after two attempts to do a short-row heel without a bunch of little holes, I came home with a still-unturned sock.  Since the Artsygal yarn is a little thinner than some of the other yarns I’ve used, I think I want to go down to size US1 needles and start over anyway.

When I arrived in Chicago, my sister was there to pick me up in her car.  Ah, the joy of not having to take the Blue Line into the city.  My sister just bought herself a 2-bedroom condo, so I even had a room to myself while staying with her.  She’s so new to the building, her name hasn’t yet been added to the directory in the lobby.  While waiting for her to park her car, though, I did notice this listing:

How would you like A Dumdum for a neighbor?

Actually, my sister’s neighbors seem perfectly pleasant.  At least, the one we met in the elevator was. 

My travelling sock accompanied me to the ALA Conference, where I caused a tiny stir by knitting in a signing line, but that’s a tale for another day.

A while back, the Loopy Ewe started selling this lovely sock yarn from Germany.  It had intense colors and fantastic yardage, and everybody wanted it.  “Sneak-ups” disappeared in minutes, people stayed up all night refreshing their browser screens in hopes of catching a few skeins, and there was much drama.  Updates to the dyer’s personal online shop also went quickly, despite the higher shipping costs.

I confess, I was part of the “F5 Crowd” several times, but never managed to snag a skein from TLE.  After the third (or so) batch that went up while I was commuting, I bought two skeins off of fellow Loopy Groupies.  One skein became the Veronica Lace Cardigan:

The other I held on to for quite a while, searching for the perfect pattern.  It is now slated to become the Entomology shawl, and I was feeling a bit sad as I strung the beads, wishing I had a bit more of the elusive Wollmeise.

And then it happened. I caught two updates in a row of the online German shop. The first package arrived yesterday. Inside a padded white airmail envelope was a cute brown/mauve bag.

Inside the brown bag, two skeins of yarn and a packet of Gummi Bears.

The yarn is lovely.  Both skeins are 100% Superwash Merino.  Fliederbusch, on the left, is a deep purple that my camera has great difficulty capturing.  Vroni, on the right, is a blend of black and brown.

I have a few more skeins coming in the next week or so.  And then the hunt for the perfect pattern begins once more.