Preparing for the KAL

So last weekend I finally finished a jumper for the partner of the recipient of an earlier jumper in Melbourne, and I shipped it off on Monday morning - then immediately cast on a baby cardigan to refresh the palette after doing two man-sized jumpers back-to-back.

It's just a good old fashioned stocking stitch polo, knit in the round ('cause I detest sewing up) with Bendigo Woollen Mills' Mystique (wool/mohair/alpaca).

The recipient rang me before he'd even tried it on to gush about how beautiful it was - god love him.

Now, on Thursday I woke with a woeful headache - probably as close as I get to something resembling a migraine, but without the incapacity. Eight hours at work and 6 ibuprofens later I decide to try some retail therapy - the theory being that there was nothing physiological wrong, just a stress headache.

Off I trot to Lincraft to see if they've got the winter yarn on sale - yes they do, but it's really only the most crapulous stuff so I bypass it to the back of the store where they keep the 'good' stuff during the off season. Espied the Lincraft and Sullivan versions of sock wool at $12.95 a pop, but decided to forge on to Tapestry Craft and try my luck there. And apart from anything else, feeling guilty about even contemplating buying more yarn...

Mmm, nothing much to get excited about at Tapestry Craft. No, that's not quite right - LOTS to get excited about at Tapestry Craft, but my mood for shopping is flagging and I decide to head home instead, with the mistaken belief that I have heaps of sock wool in the stash.

Search through the stash today and discover, shock horror, that there really isn't enough to get me excited, but enough to get started.

So, I've decided that first up for the KAL I'll go for a nice plain pair of socks for me from this ball of Opal.

And just because I could, I took a photo of the first socks I made over a year ago - a plain pair with a skein of yarn I got from Happy Spider via ebay!

They're looking a little sad these days, and I didn't get the gauge quite right so they're a bit baggy, but I love them!

My First KAL

In a bid to be a bit more than just a reader in the world of knitting blogs, I've signed up to the Southern Summer of Socks knit-along.

Of course, as soon as I did that I headed off to the stash to see what I had in the way of sock yarn. And naturally enough I had to do some searching and found that I've probably got enough to keep me going. I haven't quite got to the stage of being overrun with sock yarn. Although if I had my way, I'd have waaay more than I do. But I'm trying to be a good girl and go on a Knit From the Stash programme at the same time as my partner and I are moving to Melbourne and the last thing I need to do is bring more yarn into the house that I'm going to have to pack and truck down the Hume Highway.

Anyway, during the sock yarn search I experienced something that I'm sure all knitters do on a regular basis - the reacquaintance. You know, you pick up some skeins and try hard to remember when you bought it, whether you bought it, and why on earth you bought it.

I went through a stage of buying up on ebay and that's the stuff I really don't remember buying and some of it I think I may never knit up, but I don't want to part with it just yet...

Next up I'll hitting the patterns books searching out sock patterns.