This week began and ended with a long weekend (for me). It started with some fabulously warm weather and lots of melting and ended up a bit cooler with a couple of sprinklings of snow (but the sun was out again this afternoon). This week  also held a special event for me as I entered my fourth decade.



Easter Monday is a day off for most of Canada and Zeke spent it laying around the house.


Melting!!!!


The sunflower seeds I planted on Friday started sprouting Wednesday night and were well on their way by Thursday morning.


I had Friday off and spent the morning puttering away in my sewing room working on a new blouse.


Birthday cake .. more of that anon.


I was treated to a surprise birthday dinner from my family this evening. Complete with balloons, streamers, good food and silly hats. One of the leftover hats was trimmed down for Pipkin, my sister's pet rabbit, and I insisted on getting a picture.

Once again I need to start my post with a warning:

If you are in the Rockin' Sock Club, have not yet received your kit, and want to be surprised - read no further. There are colourful yarny pictures below.


My March-April Sock Club package arrived Thursday night. I wasn't really expecting it until next week so it was a very pleasant surprise. Abby got super excited when she heard the doorbell and our delivery person had to pass the package to me while I crouched down to hold on to the dog (sometimes having a bigger dog might be easier).


The yarn this month is all sorts of springy colours rolled into one skein of squashy goodness and titled "My Wild Irishgirlie".


The inside of my ball band says "The Maid Behind the Bar". A quick look at what other people are saying about their ball bands on the forum suggests that this is probably the name of a piece of music (Google corroborates this). It sounds to me like something that would be good for dancing and probably sounds great on a fiddle or a pennywistle.


In her Dyer's Notes this time Tina describes a pair of grandparents that seem the sweetest couple in the world. Her grandmother sounds like a wonderful person and from Tina's words I feel like I can picture her so easily. Grandmothers are lovely people.


Neither of the patterns this time around are really pulling at me so far. They both feature a stripe down the front of the foot that I don't care for. I want to finish my snowflake socks before I start anymore socks though so perhaps one of them will grow on me. If not, I'm thinking of doing plain vanilla socks, or maybe some ribs or another pair of Donyales - something simple so I can just enjoy the colours in the yarn.

Pattern: Flabella by Christina Bain for the 2010 Rockin' Sock Club (January Kit)
Yarn: Blue Moon Fiber Arts Socks that Rock lightweight in "Happy go Lucky"
Size: Small (see notes on sizing below)
Yardage: 1 skein
Needles: 2.50 mm and 2.00 mm dpns


I'm finished my socks and I love them. I love the fans. I love the bobbles. I love the dainty lace panel. I love the way the pattern flows perfectly into the heel. I love the way I got the outside line of heel stitches to continue all the way down to the base of the heel instead of ending up on the inside of my sock. The only thing I don't love is that I need to wait for more of the snow to disappear before I wear them because I just can't bear to crush all those bobbles inside my winter boots. These socks belong to the world of cute shoes.


If you read the Ravelry thread for these socks you'll find a lot of people discussing sizing and fit. Much of the discussion had been going on before I started my socks so I took a careful look at the pattern before casting on. The pattern gauge is pretty tight - almost nine stitches to the inch - and I knew that the smallest needles I had would only give me eight at best (and I didn't want to wait for smaller ones or, really, knit an entire pair of socks on 1.75 or 1.50 steel needles). When I checked out the pattern I found the stitch count around the foot on the size small was 62 stitches; pretty close to the 60 stitches I usually knit my socks at. So, even though the pattern said I should be doing the medium, I made the small. Now that I'm wearing my socks I think that was the right choice to make. They fit nicely and could even be a bit snugger.


I mentioned that these socks will be worn with shoes. I realized just before we left on vacation that there was one tricky bit to this: I don't really have any shoes that fit with socks anymore - they all require stockings. My wedding shoes will do. They are actually kind of big (slightly annoying since I had real silk stockings - very slippery - for our wedding; my solution was to nip into the bathroom before we started dancing and take my stockings off - my feet stuck to my shoes and they didn't fall off) so they will work with socks.



But they are fancy, special occasion shoes. I needed something every day. I wanted something with a mary-jane strap and I wanted them in black and I always require a nice looking heel. This was my Quest while on vacation (along with eating as many beaver tails as possible). These are what I found:




Mary-jane strap: check
Black: check
Cute heel: check

I love the stitching on these - kind of Oxfords style. They'll look awesome with a good hat.

ps. guess what came in the mail last night? I was taking yarn pictures this morning. I'll share tomorrow.