Twisted Tweed

twisted_tweed_001, originally uploaded by Camping Jason.

I started these Monday night after a weekend of relaxation and fun with friends. The pattern is from Schrodinger and the yarn is Knit Picks Memories in Yukon.

I know I'm supposed to be knitting the Campfire Socks according to the response from my poll, but I'm an idiot. I somehow failed to notice that they are made with DK weight yarn, not fingering sock yarn. That wouldn't really be a problem except...I don't have and DK weight yarn. At least, any DK weight yarn that is worth using.

What I do have is some nasty Bernat acrylic that is actually a very similar colorway to the Yukon. But it's awful to work with. I started the Campfire Socks (and actually did knit them beside the fire!) this past weekend, but alas, I could not continue. The Yukon cried loudly and miserably all the while I struggled with the nasty, practically plastic acrylic. I thought I would forge on, convincing myself that the speediness that larger needles and thicker yarn provided would make up for the spine tingling squeek of the needles passing through the yarn and the unbreathable monstrosities that would be the result, but the yarn cried on.

"I'll get to you soon enough," I tried to tell it, "these will work up quickly on size 4 needles."

"But you promised!" it pouted.

What can I say? I'm a sucker for good yarn.

Oh Yeah!

So I dyed my first yarn this weekend and Kool-Aid man was right there with me. It was pretty fun and I'll definitely do it again. It was also a lot quicker than I thought. I ended up dyeing the yarn twice to get a richer color. I started with Lorna's Laces in the Sweetie colorway. Here's a before shot:

I got this out of a clearance sale at knit2purl2.com. She was out of the colorway I wanted and substituted this. Definitely not a color I would wear. Anyways, here's the result after 4 packets of orange Kool-Aid and 2 packets of cherry.

Much better! I wanted the yellow to be orange - check - the pink to be red - check - and the purple to be a lot darker - check! I'll probably end up knitting this up with some black to subdue the colors even more (I don't think I could pull off orange, red and purple socks) and I think it'll look pretty cool. All in all a successful experience at the dye pot. You can check out more pictures of the process here.

Argyle update

The argyle socks are almost done. The socks themselves are done, but I still need to weave in the ends (the inside is a big pile of yarn vomit), duplicate stitch the crisscrossed lines in black (is there a term for that?) and block them so the stitches come out looking all purty. But, they're done enough to post on the SAMKAL4 in time to qualify for an August entry, and that's all I was worried about for now.

Up next? Why, another pair of socks of course! I'm not sure which ones though, so you can vote on your favorite here. Just note that the fair isle socks are no longer in the running, I'm a little sick of multiple strands of yarn on one piece.

Neighbor Drama

This post will most likely end up with an explicit rating. You've been warned.

The following is an account of the events that took place at approximately 10:30 p.m. Saturday, August 25. The names have been changed to protect the innocent.

Saturday night, we had friends from Boston that were in town for a wedding stay the night. We invited another couple over for small gathering to watch some movies, eat snacks and have a generally good time. We were in between movies, making brownies and getting a little loud when there was a knock on the door. We weren't expecting any more guests, so I was quite curious to know who could be at the door at this hour. I thought perhaps a friendly neighbor thought we were being too loud (we weren't) and wanted to alert us to this fact. It was not a friendly neighbor. There were, in fact, two police officers standing on our porch when I opened the door.

My immediate thought was, "Were we really that loud?", when he asked for Martha Johnson, our friend from Boston. At first I was relieved because the complaint was obviously not with us, but with our friend. I should point out that the officers were very nice and not trying to be assholes, so I didn't have a problem with providing him Martha's whereabouts. She came to the door and he proceeded to hold up her car keys. I should pause yet again to explain that Martha can be somewhat, nay, very scatterbrained, so I was not surprised to see her keys held up by the officer. We all had a good laugh until we heard the officer explaining the reason they were there.

Apparently her car was "blocking" the driveway of our neighbor. She was also parked too far from the curb, a ticketable offense. Martha, in addition to being scatterbrained, is also a notoriously bad parker/driver, so again, not a shock. The shock came from the fact that she had "blocked" the neighbor's driveway by less than 3 inches. And not even the straight line of the driveway, but the angled slope that leads to the main street. So, the asshole next door couldn't pull out of his driveway (he always backs in, which we think is weird) without having to take some care to not hit a closely parked car, and decided to involve the authorities.

Now I normally wouldn't really have a problem with this...no, I take that back and here's why. Remember, there were two officers on the porch and these guys always travel solo. So that means there were two cop cars outside our house at 10 o'clock on a Saturday night. Add to that the fact that we live in a nosy neighborhood and the people across the street were on their front porch at the time...makes for quite a bit of unnecessary neighborhood embarassment. We're upstanding young people, the most we could be found fault with is letting the front lawn grow a bit too much before mowing or yelling at the dogs a little too loudly. We don't throw huge, loud parties that clog the street with cars and keep people up at night. Granted we don't know everyone in the neighborhood, but we've only lived here for about 18 months; we're private people.

Also, why wouldn't you come knock on our door yourself? The car was parked in front of our house, wouldn't it be safe to assume that it belongs to someone there? The only thing I can think of is that he assumes we don't like him (we don't now) but we've never done anything to show him that we don't. I can only guess that he pulled this stunt because he does not like us, but I cannot imagine why.

Other problems I have with all of this: the guy only recently moved in, he's probably been here less than 6 months. I can understand someone who has lived in the neighborhood calling the cops on somone who has only recently moved in, but hey...we were here first, jerk! He also has friends over quite often and instead of them parking in his driveway or even in front of his house, they most often park in front of our house! I normally don't mind people parking in front of our house, we don't own the street and no one has a huge driveway. But I would never park in front of someone else's house if there is open space in front of the house we're visiting. The other thing, and this more of a pet peeve, is they park in the ass middle of the space, when there's plenty of room for two normal size cars.

We just can't help thinking that he called the cops to embarass us, and that is infuriating.

Happy Birthday

Happy Birthday to me,

Knit Pick memories in Smores and Yukon
Self-birthday present from someone else's de-stash

Happy Birthday to me,

Knit Picks Bare fingering weight for my first attempt at dyeing, enough for 6 pairs of socks!

Part of the birthday package from my lovely wife

Happy Birthday dear Jason,

Knit Picks Palette in Black and Navy for some more argyle socks

Part of the birthday package from my awesome wife

Happy Birthday to me!

Knit Picks DPN set, one size missing because it's already being used!

Also part of the birthday package from my wonderful wife

I'm just sayin...

Of the 25 blogs that I currently frequent (two new ones added today!) only 3 have posted anything today. I'm just sayin...

One down...

One argyle sock down...

...and one to go. I finished the first sock early Sunday morning and promptly spent the rest of the day battling the dreaded Second Sock Syndrome (SSS). I just couldn't bring myself to cast on, and it didn't help that my arms and shoulders hurt from the sprint to the finish line the night before. I eventually did cast on Sunday night and found that once I was over that hump, working on the ribbing wasn't so bad. Once I added the color, I was back in action.

I'm making good progress on the second sock so far. I started with 12 days to finish this to qualify for a prize on the SAMKAL4 I joined and I told myself that if I divided the sock into manageable parts (diamond repeats - 6 total, heel flap, heel turn and gusset, toes) I could get it done. So far it seems to be working, I've got almost 3 diamond repeats done in three days and I could start the heel flap tonight. The wrench in the whole monkey will come this weekend when we have company staying overnight Saturday. Hopefully I can either knit while we watch a movie or knit by the fire if the weather is nice.