Trip to Québec

(To the tune of The Twelve Days of Christmas)

On our trip to Québec there was:

• 12 moose

Yes, 12. I’d never seen a moose before that and it was a real treat to see so many. We had to be really careful driving because it was night time and with all the moose on the side of the road we didn’t want to risk hitting one. Because it was night time I didn’t get to take a picture and on our way back we didn’t see any. Maybe next time!

• 11, 10, 9° F, temperatures in the mountains of Maine as we were driving up

• Only 8 rows knit on my Herringbone Rib sock

• 7 long hours of driving (each way)

• 6 family members

We spent the weekend with my parents, my brother, his girlfriend and my two lovely nieces.

• 5 inches knit on my sock yarn square

• 4, the birthday my niece Naomi celebrated

• 3 skeins of sock yarn

I picked these up at the post office as we were leaving, so they kind of count, right! This is the yarn I received for the Sundara Artist’s Choice sock club.

• 2 turkeys crossing the road

• 1 fabric store

The Fabric Garden, really nice quilting shop, much bigger than my LQS. I made a few purchases…

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This is for Abigail: you mentioned in my last post being interested in one of my box bags, please check your spam folder if you’re still interested!

Eye Candy Friday

This last week has been very good to me yarn-wise. Over a period of 3 days I received 2 beautiful skeins of sock yarn.

The first one was the last instalment of the Knitterly Things Summer Sock Club. For some reason I was convinced that we would receive a Wee Skeins kit as part of the sock club so when the last mailing came I was sure that was what I would find in my package. I was a little disappointed when I opened the package but my disappointment was short when I saw the beautiful skein that I had in my hand.

I think that this yarn is the most pleasing arrangement of colors, it just goes so well all together! The yarn, a merino tencel blend is also something new for me, so I really look forward to knitting it up.

My other yarn came as a surprise. Last week I won a contest over at Chrissy’s Random Life‘s blog. Chrissy is the dyer behind the new Yarn Sprout. When I first saw that name I fell in love with it, I don’t know why but I just loved it. Chrissy dyes her yarn with natural dyes, which I think is really great too.

Here’s the skein of sock yarn in the color Juicy that she sent me:

First, it’s pink, and it’s a beautiful peachy pink, almost a solid, that will be perfect for so many things!

Don’t they look great together? I most likely wont knit them in one project but I thought that these two colorways worked very well. Now the question is, what will these beauties become!

From Your Stash Sock Club

A few days ago I promised I would talk to you about this really cool sock club I joined, so I guess it’s time I shared with you all!

It all started a few months ago when I first heard about Zen Yarn Garden’s Harmony Semi-Solid Sock Club. Like several of you I am now more a fan of semi-solid yarns than variegated yarns so I thought this would be a really fun sock club to join. Sadly, it was a bit too expensive for me and I wasn’t able to sign up. I put it on my Christmas wish list hoping Santa would get it for me but Christmas came and left without it.

So I started thinking, I have a bunch of semi-solid sock yarns in my stash, why don’t I do my own club? I’d definitely be saving money and I’d actually be using yarn from the stash, not adding to it! Around New Year’s I went through my stash and found all my semi-solids. Since there weren’t 12 of them I added some that were between semi-solid and variegated, like this skein:

I put them all together in ziploc bags like so:

I was planning to put them each in individual envelopes and pick at random but at the time I didn’t have anything appropriate to put them in. I’ll be getting some brown paper bags or something like that to put them in.

In January I decided to pick the Lotus Yarns Aura (which is why it’s not in the picture) to knit the Snowflake Lace socks, which are, by the way, coming along really well. Starting in February I will be picking at random though.

My “From Your Stash Sock Club” is definitely not a new idea, I know people were doing it last year. Also, I read last week, that someone in the Stash Knit Down KAL was doing the same thing. I think that it is a fun idea and that it will definitely save me some money! Also, who doesn’t like opening a package when you don’t know what will be inside!

Of course, you might be interested in a real Sock Club and if you do I can only suggest a great Sock Club like the Y4S Sock Club… The theme for 2008 is “Focus on New England” and will have awesome dyers like The Woolen Rabbit, A Piece of Vermont and Sunshine Yarns!

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It’s really frustrating for me to not be able to let all the readers using Bloglines know that I’ve moved. So I’m even more thankful for the few 3 or 4 who have followed me here. I do hope that most of the others will eventually make their way over here somehow!