Knitting Zen

Noro Silk Garden is probably my favorite yarn ever, so I'm not sure why it took me so long to buy some Silk Garden Sock. In any event, I bought six skeins in a buying frenzy -- they came out with 8 colors, but I didn't buy the one that's all cream and tan, or the royal blue one. Anyway, I decided I'd bought too much, so I'm keeping the two colors I liked the most, and put the others on Ebay. They're a dollar or so cheaper than I paid for them, and about the same amount cheaper than the only other seller on Ebay.

Today's time waster: photographing skeins of sock yarn and putting them up in my stash on Ravelry

I joined Ravelry a while ago, but had never done anything with it. Then yesterday I was putting up some Vera Bradley stuff on Ebay--something else I hadn't done in awhile--and was reminded of my "opal sock" saved search, and then for whatever reason, that reminded me of Ravelry, and I went there. And saw that they were having a "knitting olympics," and that intrigued me, so I went down in the basement to see what sock yarn I would pick if I was going to make a pair of Olympics socks, and that led to the photographing and listing extravaganza.

Right now I'm working on a sock that I started around the 4th of July so that I would have something to knit at the family reunion that weekend. I didn't end up knitting anything--my parents didn't want to stick around after lunch--but I'm about halfway through the first sock. I'd like to finish at least one before I start something else . . . maybe my "Olympic" knitting could be the second sock?

This is a really cute knitted kitty toy (a toy that's a kitty, not a toy for a kitty, I assume), and of course I would never buy this kind of thing as a kit -- would anyone pay $72 to the materials to knit a toy?? Even without the needles it would be over $60 just for the yarn and pattern book. I might buy the book, but if I were to make this, I'd definitely make it from scraps in my stash.

I went to the post office the other night to mail a package, and bought some stamps from the automated machine. I expected regular stamps, but got holiday stamps. Without my glasses, I couldn't really tell that they were anything other than pixelated holiday images, but it turns out that they're knitted holiday images.

For the 2007 holiday season, the U.S. Postal Service will issue Holiday Knits, four stamps featuring classic Christmas-time imagery designed and machine knitted by nationally known illustrator Nancy Stahl: There is a dignified stag; a snow-dappled evergreen tree; a perky snowman sporting a top hat; and a whimsical teddy bear.

Briefly -- I put up about a dozen new sets of stitch markers in my Etsy shop. Most of them are semi-precious stones (Amazonite, Prase, Turquoise, Sugilite), with a few Czech glass items. I have a few more sets to photograph and post later in the week. See pictures of some of them in the left-hand column. More later.

The leaving sweater was made of scraps of leftover red wool—many different shades of red. And many different qualities of yarn, from mohair to raw silk to cotton and linen mixes. And many different stitches, from ribbed to open work to waterfall to butterfly. Although it had been a decade now, Vicky could still remember watching her mother make it as a present for Vicky's high school graduation—before she was to go away to college.

"I don't want to leave Rolynka," Vicky had said, her arms wrapped around her skinny legs as she watched the needles fly in her mother's hands and the strands of wool take shape.