Hey Monkey!

Well, here it is. My first FO of 2007!


Pattern: Monkey from Knitty.
Yarn: Yarn Pirate in Punkin Head.

Omg omg omg. I love these socks. I love this yarn. I love this pattern. My toes are warm and pretty! And if y'all are thinking about Yarn Pirate yarn, you should go for it because it's great to work with. I need to weigh my leftover yarn and the socks to find out exactly how much I used, but I think these socks took only half the skein. I'm trying to decide if I want arm warmers or some other lovely matching accessory. Of course, by the time I finish the arm warmers it will surely be too hot for them. Yesterday morning it was in the 80s, but a front came through and dropped it to the high 30s. It's supposed to stay cold and wet for the rest of the week.

Here's a blurry closeup. Sorry, I suck at these kinds of pictures.


Now I know you all want more pictures of Venezia, but I really have nothing of interest to show you. I finished the second sleeve Wednesday night, and it looks just the same as the first sleeve (but slightly better).

On Thursday and Friday I spent some time playing yarn shop employee while my LYSO was out of town. (lots of fun!) I was in the shop for six hours on Thursday. I cast on 252 stitches and knit the first row and about 40 stitches of the second. There are few things more time consuming and tedious than knitting into a backwards loop cast on with blunt size 1 needles for 252 stitches (especially when you keep having to get up to "work"). I was afraid it would never end.

For anybody wondering, no the pattern does not say to use backwards loop. It says to use the invisible provisional cast on, which I hate and have never mastered. But this cast on gets folded up inside the hem and no one but me (and you guys, now that I've let it slip) will ever know that I cheated.

I've knit almost half of the hem now--later rows go much, much faster. I can't wait to switch to the size 2s and get crackin on the body. Maybe we'll have one of these crazy cold fronts in April or May and I'll actually get to wear it before next January.

Oh! In other exciting news, I signed up for a knittyboard sock exchange. My partner Jr. Mints and I will knit socks for each other and include a skein of sock yarn to swap. I'm so excited! But our socks are going to be kept secret from each other, so until the socks are safely in her hands I can't show you any pictures or reveal any details. Sorry!

Christmas Gifts, part II

Alas, I don't have pictures of my family modeling their gifts, but maybe I'll get those eventually.


I made this clapo-scarf using a modified version of the famous Clapotis. It's made with Colinette Prism in the Toscana colorway, which has a thin ply of cotton and a thick ply of loosely spun wool, dyed in very pretty colors.

I must say that Prism was not an ideal yarn for Clapotis, but Clapotis was an ideal pattern for Prism. How the heck does that work, you ask? Well, the loose wool kept grabbing itself, making the unraveling very deliberate and tedious. A smoother yarn would have unraveled much more easily. But the yarn is so *busy* that anything beyond stockinette is just too much for it--believe me, I tried.

(bottom to top: garter, stockinette, garter eyelet, modified stockinette eyelet; it looked like somebody had chewed on it)

The clap's wide bands of stockinette show off the knitted fabric, and the drop-stitch bits show off the yarn on its own. I am tremendously pleased with the way this turned out, and so was Mom.


Now on to my dad's Socks with Clocks. I plan to make this pattern available someday, because I think it's a great pattern for men--not so boring that the knitter falls into a dark yarn-stockinette coma, but simple and classic enough to pass for nice dress socks. (I was informed later that Dad couldn't wear these as dress socks because the cuff was too short. His dress socks must come all the way to the widest part of the calf. I told him to buy longer pants.)


My dad is the kind of guy who is really, really hard to shop for, especially if you want the gift to be somewhat of a surprise. He drops a lot of hints, but never for anything I could actually afford to buy him. If you ask him directly what he wants (and give him a price range) it loses all elements of surprise. (Hey Dad! Get an Amazon wishlist, PLEASE!) But when you get it right, he's one of the more grateful recipients you'll ever meet. These socks are for him to sleep in, and apparently he sleeps much better with them on. Especially when Mom "admires the yarn" by rubbing his feet. I'm really proud of the way they turned out and he's apparently pretty happy with the result, too.

When I can rip myself away from the beauty that is Venezia, I make pretty decent progress on the Monkey socks:

Monkey socks, "Monkey" socks, and a sock in a tree

I like monkeys. I mean, what's not to like about monkeys? They're smart, they're funny, and in cartoon form they are oh-so-cute.

Knitty has a pattern for some Monkey socks. I saw them, and thought "those are nice, but I already have some Monkey socks."


I finished all my Christmas knitting and *finally* got a crack at the Yarn Pirate yarn I won in Socktoberfest. I tried a couple of things and decided that this yarn wanted to be some monkey socks.


Sure enough! And oh man, talk about an addiction. It's really, really hard to put these down, which is bad because I HAVE TO FINISH A PAPER BY TOMORROW! *dies.*

P.S. I hope someday soon that they come up with the technology so you guys can grope my knitting over the internet. Squishy soft!

With the sun out, and all, I got a picture of another of my eensy weensy FO's. Isn't this adorable?


You may recognize the koigu from my kneesocks. This 24-stitch wonder took almost no time to knit. If I hadn't been so anxious to get crackin on my pretty pretty monkeys I would have made enough for the whole tree, but alas I have only the two little circs. I think I will make a tree's worth for next year. I like the idea of doing like six at once on 2 circs so you have a bunch of eensy socks hanging off the needles at once.

It's a little tree, it won't take very many.