A couple weeks ago Smokey and I flew to New York to attend #1 son's commencement ceremony. (More on that in another post.) I took along the center-pull-mess sock, which had been neglected since February. Just in case the TSA guards decided my US1 bamboo dpns were Too Dangerous For Air Travel, I weighed the entire project including a 9"x12" envelope and brought along said envelope and sufficient postage to mail the whole thing home if necessary. My knitting passed their inspection but my Micra Leatherman did not, so I was glad I was prepared.
I knitted diligently on the sock, so much so that I finished the first one and worked the second one all the way to the heel. However, I didn't have enough of the black KnitPicks sock yarn, nor had I brought along the gray reinforcement yarn. Here's how much I got done:
When we left home the sock on the right was somewhere in the heel area. (Notice how nicely the socks cling to our cedar siding. The black hanging yarn is in fact hanging. Vertically.) I am quite happy with how these are turning out, the wool wire from which they are knitted notwithstanding. I got used to its less-than-luscious feel, and I think the socks will wear well.
My stated objective in New York City was to visit some famous yarn stores and to obtain a US1 circular needle with which to knit socks in the Magic Loop method**. Objective was accomplished; I am now the proud owner of two Addi Turbo circs, size 1 and 2, purchased at School Products. Also purchased, two skeins of this lusciousness:
and so I was totally prepared when I had to stop working on the blue socks.
On the way home we stopped for a couple days to visit with Smokey's brother and sister-in-law. With my brand-new, handy-dandy Addi circ I cast on and happily knat away, feeling all the while like I was now being allowed to sit at the Big Knitters' Table. Even though all it takes to buy the needle and this yarn is a quick swipe of the plastic, I still felt like now I was a growed-up knitter. The above became this*:
which, after an encounter with this:
became this:
which required roughly an hour of detangling. But Koigu is such yarn pr0n that even detangling it is fun. Eventually I worked my way to this*:
which is where it stands today. The colors in the last photo are the most accurate.
* Deerfly and dead mosquito added for, er, scale. Hey, Erika isn't the only one with creepy critters!
** I was so excited to be getting the Addis that grabbed the first ones I touched -- 40", which seems to be mighty long. What length do you prefer for Magic Loop?
* * * * *
While in NYC I checked out School Products, Habu, Purl, and the Radical Knitting and Subversive Lace exhibit at the Museum of Design. School Products yielded the Koigu and the needles, but I was not in the market for a cone of anything, whether alpaca, camel, yak, silk, nor pure gold, so I was less than taken with the store. Habu was a total disappointment to me; once again, I was not in the market for anything they had. Both are wonderful if you are looking for what they have; I wasn't.
Purl was tiny; I'm from the midwest, where you could easily fit six or eight Purls into the yarn store I frequent in Minneapolis. But small though the store is, the yarn selection was ample and gorgeous. Leaving the store with me were two more skeins of Koigu and 225 yards of Tilly Tomas sparkly-spangled variegated silk, the latter destined for a Christmas gift scarf for one who will not be named here.
Purl also has something that should be required in yarn stores: a table filled with decent-sized swatches of (all?) the yarns in the store. Said swatches were also fully labeled with name of yarn, color used, and needle size used for the swatch. (A couple of my [many] pet peeves are yarn displayed without a swatch or, even worse, a lovely swatch or scarf or other item on display with no indication of the yarn it is made from. Sheesh, people, how tough is this? If you want to sell the yarn, show me how it looks and tell me which yarn it is. Don't make me beg for it. /rant)
The MAD exhibit was fun. #1 son went with me to the yarn stores and the museum, and after we left the latter we both said, "That was better than I expected." We had the good fortune to be able to tag along with a couple of women who were being toured through the exhibit with a fairly knowledgable docent. Even though I have an undergrad degree in art history, which required that I be able to talk at length about any given piece of art, whether I know anything about it or not, it was still nice to have that docent chatting about the pieces and forcing us to slow down and think about them.
