Green Mountain Madness

Not Socks

I just joined a group on Ravelry called Sock Knitters Anonymous and I need help from sock knitters everywhere.  In my book I call you guys Sockies.  Don't worry, I am a Sockie too!

So Dear Sockies:  I need pictures of your sock yarn stashes and comments for my new book Not Socks. This book is all about knitting with sock yarn but resisting the temptation to knit socks. Here's an excerpt from the introduction:

Knitting socks is addictive, we realize that.  Just look at the yarn!  Sock yarn, especially fingering weight is every knitter's eye candy.  Most of it is smooth and soft, supple and superwash, easy to knit, easy to wear and the color ranges can make you drool.  Knitting socks is portable and relaxing, turning the heel is exhilarating and the plethora of available needles from zippy Addies to new Hiya Hiya Bamboo lend themselves all kinds of innovative knitting techniques.  You can try creating socks on single circulars, magic loop with two circulars, traditional 4 and 5 needle methods and more.  Just picking out the needles can be too much fun!

But here’s our question:  Why stop at fun?  Fun is nice but pure adrenaline excitement is better.  Here we take knitting with sock yarn to the next level, which is where it belongs:  wearable art.

Sockies, what can you tell me about having lots of sock yarn and knitting something other than socks with it? Do you separate sock yarn from other yarn? How much sock yarn is enough and how much is too little?  For example, I suffer from stash reduction anxiety.  Can any of you commiserate? I am worried about my sock yarn. 

Do you have anything you want to share with sock knitters everywhere?  I think we have some space for comments and quotes if you have anything to share. 

First Day of Spring?

No Maple Syrup Yet
It's almost the end of March and still snowing. Last week when it looked like the snow might melt and that sugaring season would start, my husband plowed a road up to our sugar house and flushed the pans, filled the woodshed and got out his 500 buckets. This is supposed to be fun, and I guess if you are the lucky one who gets to drive the sleigh, it can be. My husband had two huge Belgian horses named Doc and Otis and they love to pull the sleigh around the sugar woods, especially if the gathering tank is empty.

It took us two days to hang the buckets using horse power and snowmobiles (our other horse power).  The sap started to drip, a sure sign of spring thaw, and all was well.  Hoping to fire up the arch we went up to the woods the next day and the next, gathering what little sap had plinked into the buckets. And then winter struck again with a vengeance. We're thinking about creating a new line of Maple products -- Very Cherry Maple Popsicles.

Hopefully next week things will thaw and we'll starting making syrup. Until then, we'll just keep on making yarn.

Our newest colors...

Here are swatches of my two new colorways that were shown on the Great Wall of Yarn at Stitches West.

The darker one is knit from Supersock in Caribou Creak and designed by none other than Myrna Stahman, author, lawyer and Seaman Scarf yarn queen. This design also appeared in the novel Back on Blossom
Street by Debbie Macomber.

The lighter one is knit from our newest sock yarn, Sockittome (pronounced sock it to me -- I thought most people would get this, but various yarn store owners have asked about the exotic name of the yarn. It is not exotic, it's just plain old American slang.)

The colorway is Cherry Blossom, which won a color contest in the UK. We marketed this coloway just in Europe until this year when the magazine that ran the contest released Cherry Blossom to the US. The
design is by lace queen Lois Young.

Stitches West....

Here is my daughter Cheyenne at Stitches West with her friend Kat from SWTC. Stitches West was so much fun and we finally got to meet the Ravelry Crew!