Yarn Traveler

I think I’ve mentioned before that I’m a pretty monogamous knitter. I try to keep myself down to just one project on the needles at a time. It’s the best way that I’ve found to keep me focused on getting everything finished. Usually, when I hit that middle area and boredom sets in, I motivate myself by looking for new patterns to start as soon as I finish what I’m working on. The more excited I am about the new project, the more likely I am to keep slogging along on the old one.

Lately though, I’ve been motoring though projects (albeit small projects). It’s amazing how much more time you have to knit when you give up stupid things like day jobs! This means that I hardly have time to get bored of one project before I’m finished and starting another. So far, I’ve kept up pretty well and haven’t been without something to cast on as soon as I’ve cast off, but today I hit the wall.

The last couple of weeks have been about my new Monkey socks (please excuse the awful photo; it was dark last night, and too cloudy today to get a decent photo).

The yarn is 100% Blue Faced Leicester from Easy Knits in the Pebble Splash colorway. This was an impulse purchase from Socktopus. I went in on a horrible, gray, rainy afternoon with the intention of just getting a circular needle (they were out) and walked out with this instead. It’s totally outside my usual color range since I never wear yellow and only rarely wear blue. I think the weather finally got to me and I just had to have something that gave me hope for spring.

I was even more surprised to find myself casting on immediately for a pair of Monkey socks. I’d seen the pattern make the rounds on Ravelry and knit groups by the dozens, so I perversely refused to make a pair.  But, there was just something about the colorway that said monkey to me, and who am I to ignore talking yarn? Now that they’re done, I can totally see that the combination doesn’t do the yarn or the pattern justice and looks a little like hot mess, but I don’t really care. I finished these bad boys in three weeks (with a week off for our Ireland trip, no less), and compared to the 5 months it took me to finish the last pair of socks I made, I’m calling it a win!

There was even enough left over to whip up a wee pair of socks for an impending arrival. These only took me two (really) bad movies to finish (Airplane II and The Benchwarmers; thanks to basic, no-cable, TV).

So, that leaves me with nothing to knit. I only have a very small stash here with me in London; 2 skeins of Drops Alpaca in red, a skein of Socks that Rock lightweight in Motley Hue, a skein of Malabrigo sock in alcaucil, and a skein of Hazel Knits in Olympic Rainforest. I’m feeling a little burnt out on socks at the moment, but since almost all of the yarn that I have at hand is sock yarn, that seems to be the easy answer.

I thought about making a lacy hat or beret out of the alpaca since my hair ends up all over the place every time the wind blows (and it blows a lot around here), but I can’t seem to find a pattern that I like. Besides, I got a glimpse of Ruth’s Entangled Stitches (Ravelry link) gloves at knit night last Thursday, and I can’t seem to get them out of my head. I think they would be fantastic in red, but just not what I want to knit right now.

My other option is to finally stop dorking around and start the fingerless gloves that I promised Matt ages ago. These have a long and whiney history. First, I bought two skeins of Koigu in San Fransico (holy cow, two years ago!?) with the intention of making him socks. But, the Koigu didn’t want to be socks, it wanted to be fingerless gloves. Due to laziness/day job/bad-girlfriendness they still haven’t been made. In the craziness leading up to the London move, the Koigu didn’t make it into the ‘to take’ pile, and now sits in my basement 5,000 miles away. Then, Matt asked for the Bubble Bobble fingerless gloves and I embarked on a colorwork adventure (documented here and here). One day I will post my final MegaMan swatch, but the short story is that I really didn’t like the yarn. I knew that I would put in all of the work for the gloves and the colorwork and still be dissapointed. Matt would love them anyway, but I would always wish I had used better yarn. Life is too short for yarn regrets, so I ditched that plan (temporarily, until I can get back within KnitPicks shipping range). That leaves me with the Malabrigo sock yarn that I have on hand, that I did buy with him in mind. My only hesitation is that I am planing on using the Knucks pattern, and I am pretty sure that the Malabrigo is a finer yarn than the recommended Rowan yarns. I just don’t feel like fiddling with patterns at the moment.

So, this is my current angst (I know, I know, it could be so much worse). I should just swatch and start the knucks, but I can’t help wanting some flashy new pattern to sweep me off my feet. Isn’t the spring Knitty due out soon?

Filed under: Finished Items on March 10th, 2009