TUSAL and a Half

Click now for JiffNotes
I found all kinds of dates for when the New Moon is this month, ranging from Sunday to today, so of course I picked the latest one on which to post. =)

Included are bits from Shakespeare's Garden, Lady Scarlett's Secret Garden, and the Astrid shawl...a bunch from the Astrid shawl, since I recently found errata and had to dump five small knitted circles. It was one of those moments of clarity, where I was knitting along and thought, "This is so hard! Should it be this hard??!? Also, why are the directions having me cast on 24 stitches, then start on round 9, when round 10 purportedly decreases the stitch count...to 24??" Yeah, guess what: errata told me to start on round 11 (when we're already at 24). I've re-knit them now, but dumped circles plus tails from replaced circles equals a lot of orts in the shot glass.

This is actually two months' worth of orts, since I was in Europe on the last TUSAL day. Well, really, a month and a half, since not much stitching was done on the 18-day vacation, except...OH WAIT A MINUTE. I forgot to put the ill-fated socks in the ort glass. Here ya go:
These socks (Kristi from Sock Innovations by Cookie A) were the only thing I took with me on the trip (besides the Kindle). I had the ribbing and set-ups rows done, so I only took the leg chart with me. Unfortunately, halfway to Germany, I realized that although I bought both these skeins at the same time, and they claimed to be from the same dye lot, they were really different colors (I know it's hard to tell from the picture, but TRUST ME). I think I knew this when I started the socks, but I kept making all kinds of excuses for the yarn:

• Oh, no, it's just the light right now. They'll look the same in sunlight
• Well, it's kettle-dyed yarn, so the outside of this skein looks lighter, but it'll even up later
• Sure, this sock looks lighter, but on two different feet, you won't be able to tell
• Really, any minute the lighter skein's going to bust out with its darker bits

and so on, until I realized that I'd always have to stand with my feet about a yard apart if I wanted to wear the socks and not look like a freak I was wearing socks from two different pairs. I was so mad that when Michael was trying to pack, I said, "I'll give you some extra room RIGHT NOW!" and grabbed the hotel key and sawed the socks loose from their skeins and TOSSED THE SKEINS. I kept the sock bits because I had this idea that IF I could find a yarn store in this weensy German town and IF they had sock yarn, even though this was a really complex pattern with two set-up rows past the cuffs, and all I had was the chart for the leg, I'd be able to figure it out by looking really hard at the sock bits and possibly unknitting them (hence the left one partially disintegrated into the weensy ball of yarn).

Thanks to my Kindle, I was able to find a blogger who'd been in this tiny German town and transcribed the addresses of the two (!) yarn stores therein. Only one of them was open, but that was enough for me to get a couple gorgeous grey-blue skeins of Regia Silk. I actually did pretty well figuring out the set-up rows...until I got home and frogged both socks because I decided that the new color would look better as Bex (same book) instead. That's another picture for another post.

OH! And let me say right here: Socks two at a time? I'm a HUGE fan. Imagine if I'd knit an entire incredibly complex Kristi before discovering I'd never have a matching one??? I guess my niece would have had a VERY fancy sock puppet.

JiffNotes
What...? Europe? We've actually started to go through the 2,000 pictures we took in Europe, so there's hope you'll see them this year!