Woohoo! I got home yesterday after a looong day and the evening shift, to find a couple of parcels waiting for me. I had accidentally purchased one on ebay, and another from a certain very lovely Welsh company that I’ve mentioned fondness for on previous occassions…
So here is what greeted me when I opened them in a fit of excitement…
Can you tell what it is yet? The one on the right is Regia Silk Shine, bought from super efficient ebayer jbay2801 at the ebay shop the Wool Baaa. She does a nice collection of sock yarns for not too much cash, and I really really really wanted to try some silk sock yarn, but couldn’t afford to pay for the Alchemy stuff in a colour I wasn’t that fond of, so I got this instead, for less than the price on one hank. It feels beautiful, and the brown is a tasty coffee bean shade with just a hint of sparkle in it. I’m not sure what pattern to use it for yet, but I think a nice simple stitch pattern would be appropriate to set the yarn off. We will see.
Next to it is something just dreamy lush…
I’m really disappointed that I couldn’t get the right colouring with the camera, but this is Fyberspates Alpaca Silk 4ply, and this is the yarn dreams are made up. I want to make sweet sweet love to this yarn. Hip Knits silk demands that I have its babies, but Fyberspates Alapaca Silk is my whore du jour. A little fluffy, full of the usual alpaca characteristics, with the silk adding a touch of stability and sheen to it. It is actually a varigated blue, with shades of grey and light turquoise in it – a bit like the LL I want to shift, but paler and brighter if that makes sense. This baby is destined for some special socks. I’m making Elfines in this stuff, have swatched and done my first figure 8 cast on, which wasn’t nearly as bad as I was expecting it to be. And on 2 circs too (I don’t have a long enough needle to do magic loop I’m afraid, and certainly not enough to do two socks at the same time). Oooooh baby.
Which brings me to something else. I finished my chunky socks in the nick of time. My feet were cold. They needed lovely things to keep them warm. I couldn’t say no. Remember I said how quick they were and how it took about half a ball of yarn? Well, I finished the second sock with about 6 inches of yarn left and a slight sweat on from worrying about it. But they fit, and are just ace. Anyone who fancies making socks but hasn’t dared yet, you should go for these – they use the same techniques as a 4ply or sock weight pattern, but they take so much less time, and do a good impression of slipper socks made by a certain well known brand. And yes, P, these were made from a certain magazine pattern that you may or may not have realised I had at the time 🙂 Bless you and your yarn excitement 😉 Anyway, I reckon that you should make these because they keep your toes soooo warm, and they’d look fab in Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Superchunky, or even, hint hint, Rowan Cork 😀
Anyway, here you are. Have a looksee.
Warm feet in love. But the chunkiness of my calves is no match for the perspective in that shot. Yuck. Yeah I have big calves, but not that frigging big! Stupid camera 😉
And here is another action shot. I like this cos you get to see how the toe looks a lot better.
Mmmmmmm, pink.
I think I am well on the way to becoming the kind of knitter who always has socks on the needles… But I don’t think there is anything wrong in that. And as Homer says, I don’t think anything I do is wrong.
Anyway, as Homer also says, I am so smart, I am so smart, S M R T. I have done lots more work on my dissertation, and have been good and not touched any knitting that requires time. That is another reason why socks are good to have around. Almost 18%, which means I’ve managed to do quite a lot since I put fingers to laptop. I reckon that by the end of the weekend I’ll be at around 21-22% which is nearly a quarter. Which is ace. I am almost relieved. I can write things. I can reinterprete other people’s work and make a small mockery of it, or suggest that it is leading up to my all important research and means my work is new and vital to the well being of libraries. And that library girls rock and library boys smell of poo.
12 thoughts on “Look Ma, more pics!”
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My my my my my my. I’m enjoying looking at the yarn you received as almost as much as looking at yarn that I receive. I love that color.
Necia
those socks do look mighty cosy. You got snow at the minute? I could have used some socks like that today, 40 deniers just didn’t do the job.
So did you say already WHAT the dissertation is about? Or is it just to library-ish to share? (OK, so you don’t want Knitscene – how about Museum Practice? :))
Now you are just asking for trouble… My dissertation is looking at the information-seeking behaviour of students at all levels, disciplines and ages. I noticed that most studies are highly focused on particular student stereotypes (e.g. undergraduate business students, or geography faculty), and I don’t think that these are entirely appropriate in such a new area of research, and that we should look at students in a more general manner before we can make any firm conclusions about their information seeking methods. Once we’ve done that, we can start to make correlations between different factors – an obvious one that still is to be demonstrated is that distance learning students will make more use of electronic resources than textbooks because of access, but what is perhaps more important is whether the libraries provide suitable assistance reflecting this kind of specific need, or whether they just try and get students to use everything and do what the librarians want them to do. The library should be doing its best to promote all services, yes, but it should also represent the different needs and research methods of students instead of expecting them to make efforts to access everything via the extra facilities they provide (like postal loans and that kind of stuff). I’ll send questionnaires out to a big pile of students, ask them to fill in how and why they choose different resource types and whether they used the librarians to help them select materials and information. From that, and some basic demographic information, I should be able to start drawing conclusions about whether there are any correlations between the demographics and their resource use and selection, and see how that all reflects on the library support they used if any.
This kind of sounds a bit fumbled right here, but believe me, when I set it in context of other research and talked about it with my tutor, it all made more sense then 😉 And my abstract is much better than this rubbish. The only similar study I’ve seen (in terms of subject matter) is one examining the stereotypes used in information studies and it says that these are mostly rubbish so I’m amongst friends there 🙂
Does that all make sense? Or have I just garbled away at 10pm when I’m actually thinking of going to bed to sleep lots?
‘whether they just try and get students to use everything and do what the librarians want them to do’ tee hee, librarians and curators are just the same 🙂
sounds like a revolution on its way. We recently did some research in the museum with a firm called Morris Hargreaves & Mcintyre which discovered that visitors were ‘browsers’ ‘followers’ ‘searchers’ or ‘researchers’ depending on their interest/knowledge/group size etc. Pretty interesting, they all needed radically different things from us (contextual info, guides, conversation, labels, interactives, activities etc) to give them the ideal visit. It felt quite groundbreaking not to lump all teenagers or over 50s together as one audience lump.
glad it’s getting you working well, though 🙂
I LOVE your chunky socks!
Can you tell me what your sock pattern is, please? It looks like just what i’m looking for. And what’s the Lorna’s Laces you want to shift?
Doh. I’ve just looked at yesterday’s blog and discovered where the socks come from. I have the mag but they look much better in your photo 🙂 and I didn’t recognize them. I’m still interested in the LL though: I’m in the UK so if you work out the postage and tell me where to send the cheque I’ll get right on to it.
Thanks guys for liking these 🙂
Helen – I’ve sent you an email about the LL yarn so go check it!
What size needles did you use for the chunky socks – I have the pattern & some purple DB super chunky!
I used two 8mm 16″ circs that I bought at the same time as the yarn, but keep in mind that the yarn I used was an american 100% wool jobbie. I dunno what I’ll use for the DB but when I made Simply Marilyn I went down to some rediculous needle size to just get close to gauge! I say swatch up on straights and hope that you get gauge on double points, or if you’ve used it before and got gauge, go for dp pins in that size. But make these socks! They are ace 🙂
Hi, love reading your blogs…will trade a new US taping of how many shows…or whatever of Desparate Housewives, which I avidly watch…for a CD of Sugarbabes if you get them where you are…I am a bookaholic, knitaholic…love to see your new projects…especially those rainbow socks, might be my next project…if I can get away from felting everything in sight…
I sooooo love these socks !!! Must make myself a pair (and winge somehow a pattern, no Knitscene here… 😉 )