Friday, January 4, 2008

Office decor

In November, my office space (which I share with two others) was renovated and graced with new furniture. Since I can no longer use the shelf over the heating units as work space I decided to do a little decorating. A nice basket of yarn. I have invited my co-workers, both knitters, to stroke the yarn in times of stress. It just makes a nice picture, well, and it relieves the stash storage crunch at home.

The red yarn at the end of the basket is my Christmas present from my ds. He picked it out himself. From the Red Neck Goat Farm near Calgary. Here is a closer look:


I've started my January socks for the Socks from Stash Club. They're made from Natural Dye Studio alpaca and silk in Amazon colourway. The yarn is really soft, but knitting up a bit muddy looking. This is three days knitting on the bus back and forth to work. Wendy Johnson's fingering weight toe-up sock with gusset, my favourite pattern. And these are my socks.

Wednesday, January 2, 2008

Black Hole!

Well, that's what it seems like. I disappeared for the fall. Once Socks of summer was over, there wasn't the same need to blog. And work got crazy busy, as it usually does. September = new school year = utter crazy madness. Every time I thought I'd update the blog, something else popped up. So, my New Year's resolution (well, one at least) is to blog more often.

But I kept knitting and managed to finish 7 1/2 pairs of socks since June 2007. Should have finished the second Frogwarts sock for my dd while I was off at Christmas, but, well, I didn't. Stroked my now considerable yarn stash, did a bit of shopping, relaxed a little and started three socks instead. Ummhum. Prepped three toes ready to just grab one and take off with it. A variety of colours and textures. Got a skein of Dream in Color Smooshy in Cocoa Kiss from Pick Up Sticks' Christmas yarn exchange and started Nagini, a Harry Potter design, nice cably snakeskin. Perfect!

Finally started the Branched Fern socks after fussing for months about what to use. The winner is the yarn I'd originally picked: DG Confetti in hunter green. The third is a generic toe-up sock with some alpaca-silk yarn from the Natural Dye Studio in England. Soft, soft, soft and a bit furry. That will be my entry in the Socks from Stash Club for January and will be the bus sock, too.

I figure if I keep busy enough the long dark month of January will whizz by.