I have a great craving to dye some sock yarn. problem - there is no sockweight dyeables in my stash. I was in the neighborhood yesterday, so poked into a yarn shop or two. one of them carries Louet Gems. but not in fingering weight (wth?!). so I went onto Knit Picks - they’re out til close to the end of October (wth!?). but look! (did I mention the dangerous?!) damn, they’ve done it again. major lust - must have rainbow birch knitting needles! the set and the sock circs. but which to start with? (maybe it’s a good thing I haven’t gotten around to rounding out my sock sets with the newer half-sizes). I’m thinking of ordering a pair of tips to test them out - but what size? last time I started with 8s as my test set, since I knit a lot of worsted weight projects. except at the time I needed 6s or 7s! on the other hand, I’ve been felting quite a bit, so 10.5s or 11s would probably be a good choice. except I’ve got two girls dresses in dk/sport weight cotton next up in the queue, so maybe I’d be better off with the 6s? (although I’m not sure if the wood and cotton would be the best combo? drag city, you know.) maybe I should just try some sock sized ones…

in news of the Coupling socks, which are now about 4 days past the swap deadline (my pal said not to worry about it), I have 2 and a half repeats done on the foot (of the second sock. I’m not that slow!). and after being so proud of myself for memorizing the pattern, I managed to mess something up. I may just fake it - who’s going to be looking at her toes that closely? (we’ll not talk about the number of errors on the first sock. not many, but if you look close enough, you’ll find a few).

in weekend news, I am heading to Wisconsin for the 3rd time in 6 weekends. a bit excessive of me, no? this time, I’m heading down (bright and early Saturday morning) for Wisconsin Sheep & Wool. I am planning to meet up with some folks from the Knitty coffeeshop around lunch, and then I’ll be shopping. my goal: to test drive a few wheels. I’m hoping to find some good dyeable sock yarn (see beginning of post) as well. and maybe some fiber. I’ve been pondering another trip down to The Fold (what’s another 2 hours if I’ve already driven 6?), but I’m not sure how well that will fit into the schedule (yeah, if I leave early enough I could get there when she opens, but then getting back to the Sheep fest in time to meet up with folks would be cutting it kind of close). we’ll see. Sunday’s plan might involve another visit to the Sheep fest, depending. and then we’ll be heading up to Devil’s Lake for a family gathering of sorts (aunts, uncles, possibly cousins. we’ll see who shows up.). and then, depending on the timing, I have a feis committee meeting to attend back home. (good thing Devil’s Lake gets me that much closer to home!)

in other news, I’m about to break our internet now that it’s finally back up to speed (we went over our bandwidth or something so they squeezed us - making it impossible to download podcasts and making regular things load really slow). unfortunately, I keep finding new podcasts. Peaknit just mentioned Socks in the City - time to check it out.