It’s been a while since I shared a knitting work in progress here, so I thought today would be a good time to do so.

I am knitting a pair of Skews. I’m using this pretty rainbow striping yarn, Regia in their Nation line:

I ran into a problem with the first sock, so I thought I’d cast on the second sock while I mulled over what to do with the first.

But I didn’t even finish the full set of increases on the toe before running into the exact same problem with the second sock.

What? You don’t notice a problem? Let me give you a closer look:

Yup. Knots.

I realize that large manufacturers consider a knot in a skein not to be a big problem. (I’ve even heard of some companies that feel it’s kosher to give you a skein with up to three knots, but I think we all agree that’s beyond reasonable!) And I could live with it, except, you see, in the ROYGBV scheme of things neither blue nor purple immediately follow yellow.

Yep, they cut out several colors when they tied them back on.

So, here’s my dilemma. Do I suck it up and just knit on (yes, knitters, I would cut out the knots themselves, rather than knit them into my sock) and live with mismatched rainbows? Or do I cut out the length of yarn between the knot and the next repeat of the correct color, knowing this will mean shorter socks? We’re talking yards and yards here…

Grrr…

What would you do?

Rudi and I returned home this morning via a red eye flight and rush hour public transportation and then preceded to squander our last day of vacation and gorgeous weather by sleeping all day. However, we did finish up our week off with a fun, fun, fun Katy Perry concert.

More vacation shots later, but in the meantime, I’ll leave you with this one …

I’m here still. I’m struggling with a book review for a book I really liked but seem to be at a loss to describe why, so it will appear shortly because it’s holding up other reviews for things I’ve read more recently.

I’ve been working on reknitting the second leg of my Bastille Day socks. I ripped back to the heel and got the stitches back on the needle okay, then discovered after a few inches of knitting the correct pattern on the back of the leg, that the yarn was still pooling unattractively. I was stuck on the idea that not knitting the second leg on the same needle as the first must be the problem, but couldn’t figure out why it should matter as much as it did.

Yesterday I found myself idly thinking about how my US1 needles had become my default pair when it used to be US2.5. And that’s when it hit me. In the three years since I knit the first sock, I’ve become a more confident lace knitter, causing my tension to become looser. So while a US2 had been necessary back when I knit the first sock, perhaps it was no longer the correct answer. I slipped the sock from its dpns to waste yarn so I could try it on and discovered that the new leg was much looser than the old one.

I ripped back yet again last night and put the stitches back on a set of US1.5s. Two inches up the leg and I can see that we finally have a winner. No pooling. Correct patterning. We might get a finished pair yet!

I thought a good way to start the three day weekend would be to finish one of the pairs of socks lingering on my needles. Since Sock Madness is hours away from completion, I thought it would be cool to get the pair I was working on when I was eliminated from competition off my pointy sticks before one of the four knitters currently sparring for world domination finishes her final pair (at least three pairs past mine).

The fastest of the competitors knit this pair of socks in roughly a day. Mine took me a month. (Admittedly, for much of the last three weeks, they’ve just been sitting in a project bag on my desk.)

Time is speeding past me faster than I write posts, which means I’m always behind on what I want to be talking about. (That might be a universal truth to be overcome…)

Two weeks ago now, Sarah, Rudi, and I headed up to Howard County for my annual foray to the Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival. We arrived in the early afternoon and after enjoying a quick bite, headed off to see the sites:

There were sheep:

There were alpacas:

There was wool:

So much, in fact, that it took us all afternoon to traverse the festival grounds and there were still sections we missed.

There were lots of knitters, too, (hi, Mikaiya!) but I didn’t take any pictures of them either nor of Sarah or Rudi, for that matter. It was that kind of overwhelming afternoon.

But I did find some pretty things, as did Sarah.

This is my haul (and the silvery glimpse of a very interested party):

The needles are size 0 Darn Pretty Needles. Rudi gave me (via his mom) US2s a couple Christmases ago and they remain the only needles I have not warped out of shape, making them a clear favorite for dpns. Plus, they really are quite attractive, in their green, multi-hued wood.

The yarn buying was slightly restrained right up until the last five minutes of the festival when I found two skeins I couldn’t choose between and broke the tie by buying both. (I know…) In the middle are two skeins of Gypsy Girl transitions sock yarn in Summer Solstice that I picked up early on because the shifts between colors in the stall samples were gorgeous. And the other two are MarigoldJen blue faced Leicester dk weight. The top is Silver Maple and the bottom is Levi, and I suspect both will go toward making lovely hats unless someone has another suggestion. The photo doesn’t do either sufficient justice to the gorgeous dye job.

Even Rudi ended up with something. A few months back, just before Della died, I accidentally broke Rudi’s favorite mug, the one he drank coffee from nearly every day and that had that magical combination of color, shape, and heft — and that we picked up on one of our favorite vacations ever. Although we checked the potter’s website, he didn’t have anything that seemed perfect, leaving Rudi disappointed and me feeling terrible.

So when Rudi decided to forgo his bike ride to tag along with Sarah and me, I hoped we could find him something he’d like. And so far he seems to. It’s not perfect, but I think it’s good enough until we find perfect someday down the road.

A sage plant purchase as we departed followed by a quick picnic of fried dough just outside the festival gates (about ten minutes after the closing announcement came over the loudspeaker), and we were done. We headed south back to D.C., content to knit (in Sarah’s and my case) and drive (in Rudi’s case) and sing along with the music after a lovely spring afternoon.

I am down to the toe on the Sock Madness socks I’ve been working on for the past month (being eliminated slows down the knitting immensely, I’ve found), which means it’s time to return to the project I was working on before the last pattern was announced.

This was a long lingering UFO (unfinished object), dating back to my first year of participating in the Tour de France knitalong. I knit the first sock during the Tour of 2008 and then inexplicably put them aside, despite a love of the yarn, Lazy Perry Ranch, and a fondness for the pattern, Bastille Day.

Suddenly this spring, I needed to finish this pair of socks and picked up the needles and cast on Sock #2. I knit it intermittently in between Sock Madness rounds, and I can only say that the stop-and-go nature may have had a detrimental effect on my project.

See how I’m nearly done? Less than an inch to go…

The knitting went quickly, although I was grumpy about how the yarn was suddenly pooling on the leg. I figured my gauge had changed over time, and ripped back to the heel in order to try to actively knit differently in order to keep the yarn from looking hideous. You can see from the above photo of the sock fronts that it’s clearly still different, but not too bad.

Unless you turn the sock over and look at the backs:

Yep. I managed to knit the leg of my second sock not once, but twice, in the wrong pattern. The front of the leg remains the same pattern as on the foot, but the back is supposed to have a different pattern. I remember reading that when I put the sock down at one point, but clearly neglected to revisit the instructions (or even the first sock!) when I picked it up again.

Third time is the charm right? I mean, after three years and three times knitting the leg, this pair of socks is going to be awesome. I can just sense it.