COLORS!

I love colors! One of the reasons I have become such a knitting junkie is because there are so many beautiful hand dyed colors. Like many others, the phenomena of the yarn magically changing color as it passes through my hands (i.e. self-striping or variegated) is more than enough to keep me entertained for hours.

I'll admit, that I also love how yarn feels and how knitted material feels. Seeing and feeling how each new yarn behaves with each new pattern is definitely part of the fun...but the colors are a big part of it.

For the past week, I've been getting to play with colors without the yarn. We've just bought our very first house (We closed yesterday!) and now we get to paint it lots of pretty colors; sage green for the living room; a cranberry color in the kitchen; a bright light peachy color for the laundry room; a creamy coffee color for the dining room; a deep smoky blue in one bedroom; a smoky plum in another; and a dusty brick color in the third...Ok, I'll stop now, but I could go on and on and on. Tomorrow, after weeks of deciding, we're taking the plunge and buying the paint. Weeeee!

Having never painted before, I'm doing lots a reading, but I'm still prepared to SUCK and have to do stuff over. Fortunately, my husband and then later his dad, will hopefully help me suck less and get more done. Yay color! Yay non-white walls! I'll post pix when we're done.

PS I almost forgot...Happy Halloween! No trick-or-treaters visited our temporary apartment which is a bummer, cuz I bought a good amount of yummy chocolate candy that is now calling my name from across the room. I also got a bundle of baby pumpkins cuz they were too cute to pass up.

That's my toe (in my favorite hand-knit slipper sox) added for scale. I'm talking tiny pumpkins!

long trip = lots o' knitting

I travel quite a bit for work, which usually consists of a flight or two to some small airport in the Northeast, renting a car, meeting with people from the National Park Service and then going home. This kind of travel is one of the reasons I love to knit. With flights and connections, there is tons and tons of time and since I'm not flying the plane, my only jobs are to manage my carry-on luggage (I hate checking bags) and to knit. Whenever I am sitting on a plane, I always wonder why more people don't knit. Sometimes, on these flights I have to prepare for whatever meeting I am heading to, but that never takes too long.

If my husband and I are traveling together, however, I'm just as content to go by car because he likes to do all of the driving and I like to do all of the knitting. In fact, if he isn't driving he gets bored and restless (the way I used to get before I discovered knitting). I offered to teach him to knit, but since that's not gonna happen anytime soon we are both quite content with our respective road trip roles.

Yesterday we drove to Starkville, MS (approx. 10 hours from Blacksburg) and I almost finished my second monkey sock. We also just got satellite radio in our car which is great because the stations available as you drive here are...uh...limited (with the exception of the fantastic college radio station in Chattanooga) So we listened to NPR and BBC news and I knitted to my little hearts content. As much as I am completely overwhelmed by the prospect of moving to Starkville, I am consoled by the prospect of many many long drives in my future with lots of hours of happy knitting.

We close on our house today...more about that to come.

Back online and driving to MS

I took my blog offline for awhile, but now that our move is imminent, I feel like it's time to start it back up.

We're driving down to Mississippi tomorrow to close on our brand new house which is one of the cooler aspects of being uprooted and dropped down into the deep south like a cold weather plant suddenly being transplanted into to a tropical climate. I know exactly how that poor plant feels.

Starkville is fine and everybody there is incredibly friendly. Unfortunately, I'm from the north and that much friendliness is completely strange to me. I have my running and knitting and chocolate to keep me sane, in no particular order. More to come on the adventures of an uprooted Yankee in the deep deep south (too much deeper and you'll end up off the Gulf Coast)

OTN at the moment: Three (yes 3!!!) pairs of socks:

(Yes I did finish that pair mentioned in my original post and I love wearing them which is why I am a full on sock junkie at the moment. I'll post a pic of me wearing them soon)

1 pair for my friend, Kerry, who doesn't know she's getting them. Hopefully she won't discover this blog until after Thanksgiving when I give them to her. These are the Monkey socks from Knitty.com that many people are making because the pattern is so darn pretty. I'm making them with Koigu KPPPM which is so much fun to knit with and also so darn pretty.

Progress to date: 1.75 socks completed - Almost done!



1 pair for my husband, Mark, made with Schaeffer-Anne that I got at my soon-to-be LYS in Columbus, MS. Mark picked out the yarn so he has no excuse for not liking them. The yarn is beautiful, BUT I opted to knit them in plain stockinette with no stitch pattern. I gotta admit that they are a little monotonous to knit, but the first one fits him perfectly.

Progress to date: 1.01 socks completed - 2nd sock casted on and a few rounds done. Just getting that 2nd sock casted on is half the battle.



1 pair just for me knitted with Knitpicks Essential Sock yarn (Tuscany Multi) which I'm really excited about because a) I taught myself to knit using 2 circulars and b) developed a pattern myself which I really like. I adopted it from the Thuja socks on Knitty.com to be used with finer gauge yarn (2.5mm needles) and a 2x2 rib/6x2 rib. The seed stitch rib kinda looks like a knitted zipper which I'm really happy with.

Progress to date: 0.65 socks completed. I'm past the heel on the first sock, but this pair will take longer since I really want to get the two pairs above done and I have lot else on my plate at the moment like this pesky move!



Alright, that's more than enough for a good restart to my blog/place to vent/therapy...