I have found myself, a knitter with only 1 1/2 pair of socks to her credit, with a whopping three...four... FIVE skeins of sock yarn on it's way to my stash. Five. 3 in my hands (from Knitorious), one down the street (soon to be delivered by a Japanese man smelling of sandalwood or cookies for the bargain price of $2 shipping - oh wait, she refunded shipping because she's just down the street. Damn!) and one from somewhere on the internet. And tomorrow there will be more because a certain shop is updating and no I'm not going to tell you which one because you might buy something I want before I can get it.

I think I caught some sort of sock yarn virus.

*Yes, I know that the title reflects a nomenclature more fitting for a tree or bacteria than a virus, but the science geeks weren't at knitting last night for me to ask. Marsha? Are you having fun?

Is this how it starts? You knit a pair of socks. You buy a few skeins from Etsy. A year goes by. Then you post on Ravelry some questions about making any sock pattern fit. And they tell you. So you knit another a pair. A CookieA pair. Then the levee breaks and you're surrounded by 75%merino/25%nylon/hand-painted/so cutely named you think your dream job at Opi might be with yarn instead/I'd never pay this much for a pair of socks but it's such SQUEAL! pretty sock yarn. And it's payday.

It's not pretty. Well, the sock yarn is. I'll show you pics when it all comes in. There are some local ones I want you to see.

Does this make me a sock knitter?

Lots more Swallowtail pics tomorrow!

As soon as I saw this yarn on eBay, I new it would be perfect for Eunny's Print O' The Wave Stole. The color gradations should look really cool with this pattern. I got the yarn and loved it even more. It's really, really tiny, though. Eunny's model was made with cobweb weight on size 00 needles and.... Are you kidding me? Do they even MAKE size 00 needles that aren't dpns? So I got out the size 1 40" circ I've been saving for future magic looping of socks and tried it out.

This is friggin' tiny. After seven rows, it's about the width of a dime. I'm not sure if the needle still isn't too big. If I do this, I think I'll double the number of repeats and double the number of repeats of the edging. I could - I have plenty of yarn. I think Harry of Fleegle's blog would be a big help in this, but he's in Japan.

So I put it down and tried something else ... on size 2s.

Much better. Yeah.

I was going to save this post until tomorrow, but since I don't seem to have any new blog posts to read, I assume you don't either - so here's an encore:

I had already run the blocking wires through the shawl, soaked it, walked on it, and was holding it above the bed when I realized that I had no idea where my blocking pins were. They were on one of the bedside tables, but in the flurry of monk-cleaning I had put them somewhere and .... well. who knows where that was. I searched, made a big mess, and had to find an alternative.

Wrapping crochet cotton around the bedframe sounded like a good idea at first, but then it was a little too reminiscent of a japanese bondage film - lots of work when you don't know if it's really going to go well. (Not that I've ever seen one - unless Shintaro Katsu's "Hanzo the Razor" flicks count ... and they probably do.) So off to Target I went to buy a box of pins. The pint of Chubby Hubby was just to take the edge off.

So it's on the bed, drying and blocking under the ceiling fan. Keep in mind that it's wet, so it doesn't look very "silky" in these pics:

Swallowtail is all knitted up and ready for blocking. I let it rest for a day so that the nupps would tighten up a bit. I found as I was going along that though they seemed loose when I did them, they'd tighten up by the time I'd done a few more rows. I found the same to be true with Bobble Hell.

I got a little nervous at the end. This is all I had left:

Swallowtail and I spent a big part of the weekend outdoors. I have a pink sunburn to prove it. The shawl may have one too, but it's hard to tell. I've compromised on the nupps. P2tog, P3tog, pass both stitches to left needle and P2tog is much faster than trying to stick a needle through 5 stitches. I'm almost to the edging!

Went to the Missouri Botanical Garden for Chinese Culture Days with Mindy and Kara today. It's not as big as the Japanese Festival, but it gets bigger every year. Considering that St. Louis' Chinese population is 4 times greater than our Japanese population, it seems a little out of wack. The Thunder Drum Ensemble, a Shaolin Kung Fu expert, and the Shanghai Acrobats were really excellent this year. I have some great videos, but Video Egg (that I use to upload videos to this blog) isn't yet Vista compliant. Bummer, 'cause the drumming ones are really cool.

Despite all the festivities, we managed to get some knitting in public accomplished. Kara cast on a new pair of socks, Mindy knitted up a sample of her self-striping yarn (check out her Etsy shop) and I continued to work my way through the nupps of Swallowtail. Aside from a slight sunburn, it was an awesome day.

You had to be there.