brought to you by christine

we interrupt our regularly scheduled sock knitting for a 1 AM impulse knitting project:

the love bite, recommended by the inspirational and insanely fast knitter, christine. check out her blog for lelah, her own design! so talented, that woman. yay, christine!

i am yet distracted again from the socks... i'm using a brown/black worsted weight wool i had bought for a scarf. i'm shocked these pictures came out so well! maybe i'm getting better at this stuff. will take more pictures later...

i ♥ socks

too bad i have hit the dreaded "second sock syndrome" that kris has written about on her blog. *sigh* oh well... so the fruits of the past week's labor...

first, i tried to start the second sh*tbrown legwarmer... i swear i tried REALLY hard. but i only got this far:

instead, i got distracted by that camoflauge stripe... and in my stash, there it was, a second and third skein. so, voila! sock. (^_^)
 
i love how the top part self-checkered! how cool is that.

but while i was in my stash, what did i find? why, more sock yarn, of course! about a year or so ago i had been ambitious and said i would start knitting socks. on ebay i purchased two skeins of this nifty trampoline yarn, which is sock yarn with elastic built in to reinforce the shape. so i thought now as a good a time as any to try it out! so i started making socks, and i think i'm giving these to my mom since they're more her style than mine:
 

again, love the self-striping. too bad it didn't continue onto the second sock, but eh... whatever. i'm not that anal about it. YET. hehe...

onto scary pictures now. so as i said before, i was looking through my stash. well, i separated my stash into 3 piles:

• the workable pile - yarn that is perfectly separated by skein, hasn't been touched or used and is awaiting my creative hands to make it into something wonderful and to be enjoyed by whoever it is given to;
• the "frog me" pile - yarn that has been used by my creative hands and has been made into hideous things that i would never be enjoyed by the people presented to (obviously i was off on my creativity that day); and
• the "untangle me" pile - yarn that, in the mix of being used, being thrown around from apartment to apartment as i have moved quite a lot over the years... and is now a huge tangled mess.

the great news is my stash is organized. the horrible news is:

1. i have quite a lot to knit (or de-stash... i'm thinking about it, still)
   
2. i have quite a lot to frog
   (pics to come) and
3. i have quite a lot to untangle
   
   yes, that is one HUGE laundry bag on the right. i don't know how it happened. oh well, i know what i'm doing this weekend.... *sigh* well, after i finish my socks, of course. (^_^)

oh, thought i might add the amuzing picture of my cat, karma, in a box. what is it about cats and boxes? i think he's trying to re-capture feelings he had when he was brought home from the adoption shelter:

knitting fun in san fran

day 1 - tuesday - arrive in oakland
ros picks me up from the airport. we settle down at her place as i play with the kitties. everyone i know with cats always has two. hers are tyra and tyson.

tyson is awesome... can you tell that he's a mutant? he has 22 toes total (7, 6, 5 and 4). you can see the 7 toes on the front-left paw in this pic.
so the first day was mainly being a vegetable. while i was waiting for ros to finish work, we watched "knitty gritty" on tivo while finishing off my sh*tbrown legwarmer. honestly, that show goes WAY too fast for beginning knitters. i'm shocked that people can follow it so well... but it does have some great tips every so often.

here's the finished legwarmer:

only problem with it is i didn't feel like the ribbing would keep... so off we went to michael's to search for some elastic. but i'm a yarn ho, so of course, i bought some yarn as well.

elastic cord became elastic cord and 4 balls of moda dea self-striping sock yarn. i guess the legwarmers inspired me! and the curiosity of self-striping yarn always fascinated me... to the point that by the end of my 5 day trip... voila! my first pair of socks ever!

this totally has me sock crazy now... i used a pattern found online located here. the pattern was easy enough, but there were some inconsistencies in the way the pattern was written. i figured it out, though. (^_^)

unfortunately, we were also supposed to buy dpn's for ros but were unable to find any... she wanted to start knitty's shimmer while i was there... it would be her first tackling of circular knitting, and she wanted me there for any "hands on" assistance. oh well...

day 2- wednesday - more vegging out in castro valley
i mainly worked on my socks and watched more tivo. watching tivo made me feel so deprived with my "regular cable." i caught up on buffy seasons 6 & 7, and then watched a ton of movies again... the good thing about ros working from home is i get to spend time with her at home. the bad thing is we couldn't do anything until around 5:30. oh well.

at 5:30, off we went to ros's LYS in search of dpn's. of course, me with my sock obsession decided i needed to learn how to do socks on two circulars... so with credit card in hand:

but that wasn't the best part of the visit to adela's yarn... when talking to the salesperson, she said "oh, most of our stuff is over at the convention center now..." i had managed to choose to arrive in san francisco the same weekend STITCHES WEST was being held! AND customer's of adela's yarn were given a $2 discount off admission at the door! how exciting... well, you know where i was heading on saturday.

day 3- thursday - more vegging and then heading off into the city.
and when i was in the city, guess where i went?

for ages, i've been wanting to head to artfibers. marnie maclean has been using their yarns in many of her free patterns so i wanted to make this one of my "must see" stops in san fran. what a dork, huh? after artfibers, we headed for a fabulous sushi dinner at kiki, and then back to meet up with roland to do the "joy's vacation hand-off".

day 4- friday - the most "non-knitting-filled" day of the trip...
i spent the whole day with my friend roland from high school... starting our day at 11 AM, we headed off to a traditional filipino breakfast at goldilocks, a filipino bakery/restaurant chain that has ZERO locations on the east coast. i swear, if they opened one out here i would gain about 50 lbs. i think i left there with about $40 in filipino baked goods and pastries for the family at home. lol...

after goldilocks, it was off to san francisco's union square (yes, they have one there, too... but it's more like 5th ave than our union sq)... and then onto a cable car to fisherman's wharf and ghiradelli square. i could bore you with touristy pictures of ghiradelli and alcatraz, but instead i will show you this:

apparently, there is a fisherman's wharf tour where everyone is on a segway. i saw it online when i was researching things to do, but i didn't really think anyone would do it... i mean... is it really that hard to WALK fisherman's wharf? lol... the rest of the day is boring and no actual knitting content... but i'm pretty sure if i'm relocating within the next year or so, i'm pretty sure it's going to be here.

day 5- saturday - my last day - stitches west (or "joy falls off the 'yarnaholics anonymous' wagon")

so remember this year's resolution that i said i wouldn't buy any yarn? um, yeah, that's done. after breakfast at hobee's with roland and his fiancee, maria, we met up with rosalynn to do another hand-off and head over to the convention center.
the place was FILLED with aisles and aisles of yarn... i was shocked i resisted as much as i could because i started off buying stuff really slowly. first, it was a summer poncho pattern... and then it was a ribbon yarn from tess designer yarns... and then i found manos on sale. *sigh* so 4 skeins of purple manos, and 2 skeins of varigated manos... and then i needed to satisfy the self-striping yarn obsession... i picked up "not just socks" by sandi rosner and 2 balls of Lana Grossa's Meilenweit. then the knitting guild of america had their own booth and was giving out free copies of this month's issue of cast on. in the end, it all looked like this:

not that i regret the purchases, but i have a ton of knitting to do now to justify the purchases. (^_^)

so that was san fran in a nutshell... mostly knitting, lots of yarn... i wish i went out to a knitting circle to meet the bay area knitters, but there was only so much time. maybe when i finally move out there, huh?

oh, and by the way

"vacation" is my middle name

um... yeah, so i know this may be hard to believe, but i'm going on vacation again. uh... yeah, seriously. i'm heading to san francisco for 5 days. tomorrow. well, technically today, in about 7 hours. heh.

so i'm sure you're wondering how this came to be. i think i had a breakdown of sorts and my life seriously stressed me out... i was chatting on AOL IM with a friend of mine from college that lives in san fran, and its been about a year since we last saw each other... well, obviously the stress got to me and i said "would it be ok if i visited this month?" and within an hour i had tickets leaving for the 8th of february. talk about buying on impulse. lol...

so off i go tomorrow leaving jfk on jetblue at 9:35 or something like that. i'm going by myself, visiting my two friends in the bay area. now what does this have to do with knitting, you might ask? since i do all of my ranting on either of the two "joy loses her mind" blogs located on both xanga and blogspot... this, in fact has a lot to do with knitting. i recently discovered that my friend has taken up the hobby and needs my help in reading patterns and the like. HOW EXCITING!

my excitement really comes from the fact that the last time i went out there, no one really seemed interested in the whole knitting thing but now they can't wait for my knitting visit. lol... our one friend in LA even said that the next time i come out i should try teaching her again! i just love it.

one thing i might have to ask, though... are there any knitting circles out there my friend and i could infiltrate while i'm on my little adventure out in san fran? ros actually is new to the area and doesn't know many females, so this would be great for her as well. any input my readers could give would be fantastic. thanks for your help!

and before i forget - i finished the scarf for my hunny with the star wars imperial army logo on it today! it's actually my own pattern, so i will be more than happy to post it for the many other star wars fanatics out there! i'm also working on matching hat, so that will come in time as well. onto finishing my legwarmers now.... not that i need them in san francisco, but maybe for the trip back. :)