The Sadly Delayed Update, Part 1.

Okay this thing has been languishing in my blogger account as a draft for a good month now, and I really have to get it put up. I had been meaning to post this around the end of Socktoberfest, but as the result of dog-sitting overnight (yeah, my sinuses hated me for that, guess I know one thing I'm allergic to), not getting anywhere enough sleep and working with the public, I got the creeping crud again. Cue feeling like someone had filled my sinuses with Elmer's Glue, and it just would not go away for a couple weeks.

Since then--and in the last couple weeks particularly--I've just been exhausted by work. It's that time of the year that people get sick so I 've been getting a lot of overtime, though the upside is that it'll give me some extra cash for the holidays...and more sock yarn, once my holiday knitting is done. But more on that later. First, housekeeping.



First up, the Boring Socks of Doom. DONE. Finished those a few weeks ago, and was glad to see them gone.

Next: Socktoberfest Shopping! I went into Toronto for the Creative Sewing and Needlework Festival and a yarn crawl on Oct. 22nd, planning to limit myself to two hours at the CSNF as I was going to be meeting up with someone in the Beaches for lunch.

I finished my walkthrough of the CSNF in about thirty minutes without seeing one thing that I really wanted to buy.

Yeah.

I haven't been able to go in the last two years so I don't know if there's been some gradual decline in the number of knitting vendors, but damn, it was disappointing. Not only that, but those few knitting vendors that were there weren't carrying anything I was looking for: precious little sock yarn--mostly of the self-striping variety--no laceweight and no knitting books that sparked my interest. A lot of the vendors I saw were selling kits (which don't really interest me as I'm a) a plus size and b) more likely to make stuff up on my own) and a lot of the others had a great deal of the frou-frou, fluffy crap that I'm not interested in.

Needless to say, I don't think I'll be going next year. I'll consider the $15 admission fee the cost of re-prioritizing my yarn trips (the DKC Knitter's Frolic is now the highlight of my knitting calendar!).



Anyway, went off to the Beaches and met up with my non-knitting friend at the Naked Sheep, which I was glad to finally be able to go to. Nice store, nice selection, and yay, I found Nancy Bush's "Knitting on the Road"! Though I'm not sure it'll become a regular haunt on my knitting trips to Toronto, considering it's fairly far out on the streetcar and a lot of the stuff I'll probably be intending to look for isn't stocked--which is nothing against the store, it just doesn't fit in to my purchasing habits (hell, I hardly go to Romni anymore for the same reason). If I have time, though, I'll make the trip.

Long, comfortable lunch with friend in a pub, then we split up and I went off to Lettuce Knit. This was my first time at the new location, and I love the store--so cozy, and so much good yarn. They had just gotten in a shipment of Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock! So many colours! It probably took me a good half-hour to decide which of those I wanted alone. I also got my hands on some Trekking XXL, finally, and I found some gorgeous alpaca laceweight that I didn't buy even though I was lusting after it. Next time, and once I finish the Swallowtail Shawl. I also got to pet the resident kitties, which was nice as I still miss my housemate's cat from university. If I hadn't had my arms full and if I'd been sure of an easy reception from the cats I would have picked them up and cuddled them.

Last stop was the Knit Cafe on Queen St. W. and there, I found KOIGU! I must have spent half an hour trying to decide what to get, which was complicated by the fact that I could only find one of each of the colourways that jumped out at me, which is always the way, of course. I did find two skeins of a colourway I really liked, and which turned out to be rather appropriate. Oddly enough, the colours I picked...were exactly the same colours of the bruise I found on my thigh later that night from whacking it with the turnstile at one of the subway stations. I have now dubbed it the "bumps and bruises" colourway (see below), and I'm looking for a texture pattern that, well, fits the theme. Something like what the Lizard Ridge squares look like before they're blocked. Of course I could use Lizard Ridge, but all thos wraps and turns look like they could really be a pain in the ass to do in a sock, and I'm not sure it would keep that texture.



See? The dark blues, the dark reds and purples... They're even more vivid in person, really. Told you I was sad. Of course I could elaborate more about where my brain has gone with connections to that colourway, but then it would only make me sound even MORE sad, so no.

I have more--namely everything I've been doing in the weeks since that trip, but I think I'll have to save that one for another post or I'll really never get this one put up.