Back home again

I'm back in my own home sweet home after a simply wonderful trip through Yellowstone Park, Jackson, and Wapiti Valley. I am so grateful for Thomas and I to have had this chance to spend such a luxuriously long time together, just the two of us. We saw geysers, a grizzly bear, mountains, rivers, trees, pronghorn antelopes, elk, and lots of bison (is it any coincidence that my favourite animals were the fiber-bearing ones? I think not.) I hoped to find some bison fibre for spinning, or at least some bison yarn, somewhere on my travels but alas, did not, so I will order some from somewhere (once I remember where I saw the information about it.)

As any self-respecting knitter would, I took multiple knitting projects with me. I had enough sock yarn on hand for at least five pairs of socks and all the accouterments necessary. But.....gasp.....dare I say it? I did not knit a single stitch. Every day was so full, and I was enjoying my time with Thomas so much, that I didn't need to, or want to, knit. This of course brings my sanity into question but I plead in my defense that since Thomas left his golf clubs at home (and golf is to him what knitting is to me) for the first vacation ever we just spent time doing things together instead of our own activities. And we liked it.

Of course, this can't continue. Since returning home we've each rectified the situation by (for me) immediately starting a sock out of a self-patterning Sockotta yarn in black, white, and purple (it's in the lower left corner of the photo; the ball that looks like it got started as something and then unraveled, because that is what happened to it some time ago) and Thomas has been on the golf course three days out of the four we have been home. My knitting habit is actually cheaper than his golf habit, but the evidence of my stash acquisitions does have a way of hogging up closet space, while golf doesn't leave a lot of traces around the house, if you don't count all those tiny golf pencils in the laundry.

And even if I didn't knit, at least I did buy some yarn! There's a very nice small needlework shop in Cody called The Iron Kettle, and I wanted to get a little something as souvenir yarn. I must admit to not paying as much attention as I normally would, and thought I had purchased some Wildfoote sock yarn, but after returning home I realized I had in fact bought Cotton Fine from Brown Sheep. This comes from not actually reading the label, but simply thinking I recognized the style of the lettering on the label. This turns out to be a happy accident as I have been wanting to try Cotton Fine (80% cotton, 20% merino) as I have really liked Cotton Fleece yarn, which is a worsted weight version of the same blend. I love the deep red colour (sorry for the blurry photo) and now am not sure if it will still be socks as I had planned, or if it will become a lace scarf or something of that sort.

As I had planned to knit on the trip, and had planned to knit socks, I purchased a Knitpicks complete set of sock needles, along with two skeins of Gloss (80% merino, 20% silk) in Grape and two skeins of Palette (heathered wool) in a deep blue. I'm using the needles for the first time on the Sockotta socks, and am loving them. I chose the 6" length which is so much easier in my small hands than 7 or 8"ones, and even though I knit loosely the slick metal is not sliding out of my stitches as I feared they might - maybe the shorter length helps there, too. The Knitpicks set is great because it contains 2.00 mm through 3.25 mm sizes, which in US sizes translates to size 0 through 3, with two variations of sizes 1 and 2, giving a complete range of choices. The set comes in a neat clear plastic envelope with a secure snap.making it perfect for carrying around. Now if only it fit into the Knitpicks Options inter-changeable circulars binder.