Toe-Up Stripey Goodness

Yay! A finished project. These are my Toe-Up Stripey Noro Socks and I love them. I even kept knitting them higher than I normally wear my socks because I loved seeing the colors change and contrast with the black.

They are far from perfect. there some serious color jag issues in spots and yet, still love them. I love them because they fit just right and because they are my first toe-up socks and because I figured out Judy's Magic Cast-On (which is freakin' brilliant, by the way) and because I knit them while I was visiting Ariel and because the second sock flew off my needles within days and because it was cool that flight attendants would stop by my seat and ask about them and compliment the socks (and therefore me) and because Noro is just so damn pretty. 

The details: Wendy's Fingering Weight Toe-Up Socks with Gusset Heel in Noro Kureyon Sock (left over from my sister's socks) and Valley Yarns Huntington.

Sights of San Francisco

I took a whole slew of photos of San Francisco and I thought I'd share a few. If you want to see them all head to my flickr stream here.

Knitting Out West

Greetings! I am back from my trip to West Coast to visit the fabulous Ariel. It was my first time to the San Francisco/Oakland area and it was great. A wonderful mix of sight-seeing, eating, imbibing and knitting. Since this is a knitting blog,I figured this first post will focus on the knitting bits.
My first day there we popped into Article Pract in Oakland.  A wonderful store with a large variety of yarn, really helpful staff and they were having a sale. A sale on ALL yarn. Really, it would have been simply rude to not buy anything. (I am all about the good manners.) As much as I love stripey and variegated sock yarns, I realized that for certain patterns I really need to have some nice solid tonal yarns in my stash.  This madelinetosh sock is so soft and the color just so heavenly.

A trip to the Mission had to include a stop at ImagiKnit. A big store with a huge variety of yarns, where I think I was so overwhelmed I walked away empty-handed. But being the good friend that I am, I did find perfect green yarn that she simply I knew Ariel would be unable to resist. I can spot Ariel green's and orange's from a good 15 feet away.

I really wanted "souvenir yarn" something either spun or dyed local so we hit up  Piedmont Yarn for some of their hand-dyed Piedmont Wildsocks. I am pretty certain I already have the pattern chosen for this yarn. Stay tuned...

Even better than the new yarn, it was so wonderful just to hang out with Ariel and knit. It reminded me how much I miss knitting with others.   Our weekly group kind of faded away a while back and while I have seen some of my knittah's socially we haven't sat and knit together for a long time. Ariel and I would pull out our socks and knit all over the place. We scoured projects on ravelry together when we discovered a shawl pattern we loved from someone we met at Article Pract. I may have even have been molested by some of her stash. (I am working hard to repress that memory).   We chatted with one sweet woman on BART whose husband was very well-trained to feign interest in the difference between DPN's and circulars.  Nearly any time we stopped to rest our weary feet out came the knitting. A fellow knitter understands that we are not leaving the cafe in North Beach until I have finished turning the heel.  I loved when one of her friends asked us how we knew each other and Ariel said simply "knitting". The look on his face was one of such confusion, it was priceless.  One evening after a lot of walking, Ariel said "How 'bout wine, knitting and Firefly?" and I could not imagine anything better. 

My sock in progress while enjoying an afternoon beer.