Wednesday is WIP day

I am extremely happy to be able to say that I have finished knitting my Priscilla shrug. I still need to sew the arms and weave in the ends, but that can be done very quickly. I really love this project. The Malibrigo yarn is so soft and cuddly. I used a little over 3 skeins, and because Malibrigo is a single ply, pure wool yarn I added each skein by doing a spit join. Literally, you spit on each end so that you can join them together by hand felting them together. It's disgusting, but very effective. The best part is that it leaves no ends that have to be woven in.

I made a tiny bit of progress on the socks. I don't even know what I'm calling this project anymore, I've frogged and restarted so many times. And I think there's probably one more frogging in its future. I like the yarn; it's very comfortable to knit. I love the colorway, although it is just a bit too variegated to work with (or apparently, without) a complex stitch pattern. All in all, I feel like I should be a lot happier knitting socks and this pair just isn't doing it for me.

 

I did end up casting on a different pair of socks. NOT because I'm unhappy with the pair I've been working on. I am totally determined to get that pair finished one way or another. But I had jury duty Tuesday, and I wanted to bring a fun knitting project with me. So I grabbed a pretty skein of sock yarn and I cast on a Monkey sock at the courthouse. This yarn, Alpaca Sox from Classic Elite Yarns, is another very variegated colorway. (They call it #1850, just in case you were wondering. I wish yarn companies were required to use fun names -- numbered colorways are so very undescriptive.) I've made several pairs using Cookie A's Monkey pattern, so I practically have it memorized. And since it works up equally great with wild colors as it does in a solid color, it seemed like a good choice for courthouse socks. I'm doing this pair a little differently, at least for me. I have two sets of my size 2 dpns tied up with the first pair of socks (let's refer to them as the Froggy Socks, just to make things easier). Which left me with only free 1 set the size 2 dpns (that I could easily find, anyway). Normally I cast on the first sock and knit the cuff, then cast on the 2nd sock and knit the cuff and the leg, go back to the first sock and knit the leg and the heel flap, so back to the 2nd sock and knit the heel flap, and so on. By doing each portion of my socks alternately, it means that I only have a toe left to knit after I kitchner off the toe of the first sock. Because I only have the 1 set of dpns, this pair is going to have be knit one complete sock at a time. Unless, of course, I break down and buy another set of dpns. Which I'll probably end up doing. Sigh. This is why my needle stash is almost as large as my yarn stash.