Sunday, September 17, 2006

Stocking Progress on Vacation



We vacationed. It was wonderful. I knit. I hate it. ARRRRHHGG.
In my knit-shop induced stupor. . . I just bought plain old Christmas colors. I am not a strong color person. I mean, I am not super creative with color combinations. It takes a lot of effort to try and do things in a fresh way (I also have a similar problem with needing everything to be symetrical. . .) Anyway, I am feeling like my color choices don't show off how pretty the yarn is. It's cascade 220 and it's wool and yummy. It looks, to me, like I made it with red heart. Now, there's nothing wrong with red heart. . .but I'd just buy red heart if I wanted it to look like that. So, now I'm frustrated because it looks a little "dollar store" to me and to top it off, Santa looks like Papa-freakin' smurf. . . really, can you tell me that he doesn't? Look at him!

The knitting was going along so smoothly. I'm liking the pattern. It's from this book. I'm doing the mix and match stockings with green, red, white, blue and a random purple color. Mostly I picked the colors because my LYS is going out of business and that's what was there. So, I can't even go trade the skeins I haven't wound yet. My best thought, at this point, is to frog the smurfy santas and use some heather/gray yarn I found at a thrift store (have I
mentioned that I'm an obsessive deal-finder?) that is very similar in weight and is wool like the cascade 220. I'll use the gray as the background for santa, so he doesn't have a blue or green or purple face (the only choices with my current colors). Any thoughts?

So, I put the stocking aside while on vacation. I happened upon an entire laundry basket full of knit picks sock yarn and knit one crochet too merino at a thrift store on the oregon coast for 99 cents a skein. Needless to say, I bought it all and immediately started knitting a tasty little sock. . .I love it.
Now, my momentum on the stockings is lagging, but my sock-lust is just beginning. I have some time. Does anyone have any thoughts on a pattern choice for stockings for a newbie knitter? I have a few in my stitch n' B that are wanting to start with stockings and I'm nervous for them (and for me. . . I'll be teaching them!).
Okay, I'll post more after the death of santa smurf.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

That is hilarious! Sorry, the colors didn't turn out the way you were hoping... I'm using the same book, although I'm thinking I'll do the NW Rustic looking ones (plain and simple, no intarsia to deal with...)

Kathy said...

I do like Papa Smurf, but I understand maybe that's not the idea you were going for (grin). The knitpicks sock yarn is great and I used the same colorway in your photo to knit a pair for my husband. Have fun with them.