Extravayarnza

A Toast to the end of a long hard weekend & to a well earned day off!

So, as many of you know I had a hard weekend. I worked a bunch of 14+ hour days, had a fun bonus Thanksgiving dinner, and topped it off with a 5am wake up call this morning.

Nutcracker was fun. I will be looking forward to working it again next year. It's really nice to work in the theatre a few times a year. Nothings better to just give me a bit of energy (well, all but that early morning show today). The kids & parents really were just terrific & since I hadn't seen Nutcracker in probably 10+ years sitting through a few shows was a breeze.

I did find some knitting time.... My 'Karma's a Bitch' socks grew just a tad~

I had no scale with me at Wharton, so I got a bit nervous about how much yarn I was using. The longer sock is on stitch holders & I'll knit the second sock up to that point to see how yarn usage looks. I'm hoping to add about 2 inches of 1x1 ribbing to the length of the first sock.

I also started a new pair of socks today now that I can knit in something other than complete darkness (that second sock was knit completely backstage except for the heel!). Luckily Theresa released her Whiskers & Paw  Prints sock pattern.

This is a fun technical pattern filled with her terrific little details. I especially love the cat paw for the toe. I cast-on with the lovely Claudia's Handpainted sock yarn. I noticed in my swatch this weekend that this yarn simply doesn't pool. You'd need to knit a sock with like 130 stitches around to make this yarn pool. Totally cool! In fact each color is only used once per repeat, but it lasts for about 2/3 of a round. It's working really well for the stranded 'cat whisker' stitches on this sock.

Unfortunately I did have one tiny issue with the yarn. After knitting the picot cuff & 2 repeats of the stitch pattern I noticed my hands were completely purple! I still haven't gotten it completely scrubbed off. So, I reskeined the hanks & started washing...

A half dozen washings & a vinegar soak didn't do the trick, so into the microwave it went!

My sock got to just hang out for 10 minutes until the dye was exhausted~

Now, as a dyer I understand how difficult it is to get the dye exhausted in this saturated of a colorway. I doubt this is an issue in most of her yarns. If you ever have this sort of trouble in any wool (or any animal) based yarn it's really easy to solve. Soak for a while in a water and vinegar bath (I used about a half cup of vinegar in a sink of water). Then place in  a glass dish lightly covered with plastic wrap. Microwave in 2 minute intervals until the water at the bottom of the dish is clear. Then let it completely cool & rinse.

I love this sock pattern with this yarn. The picture at the top of the post shows how far I got tonight.

So, I have Tuesday off & I know I'm looking forward to a trip to Ikea and a bit of rest! Then time to get back to my absolutely wonderful routine.