WIP: Pheasant Socks & Signature Needles: First Thoughts.

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I'm a car knitter.

Most people ask me "how do you knit so fast?!", which I think is hilarious because I'm *not* fast at all...but I do have a lot of blah time in the car. My mom lives two hours away. Chop's family lives an hour away. JoAnn's, Target, etc are all 45 minutes away. This means lots & lots of car knitting time.

Fine with me. ;)

My Signature Needle Arts needles arrived yesterday! Very fast shipping which was awesome. In case you haven't been following along I got a size 1, 5 inch length on a 32 inch cord. I cast on for these socks this morning, I've knit a solid 6 hours with them today, here are a few of my initial thoughts:

  • Sharp sharp SHARP! And I *love* that. Incredibly pointy. If you are the type of knitter who moves the tip of the needle with your finger, you'll end up with a little divot in your fingertip.
  • The join...not in love. I definitely have to help the yarn over which is kind of a bummer. I do sort of worry about the cord snapping away from the needle. I'm not quite sure why but it seems like the join isn't super sturdy. Later on I think I'll take a photo to show you what I mean. I could just be paranoid. BUT! I can imagine it would be tricky to have a super smooth join on a size 1 needle.
  • I like the cords! I'm doing two socks at a time and while the cord isn't as slick as addi turbo lace (my standard sock needle) it is very flexible, which I really like. My favorite pair of addi's have a crease in the cord, I doubt these will ever crease. That's pretty neat.

The yarn I'm using is so dreamy. Last week I was browsing pinterest & saw this pin. I followed links around until I found Fly Along, Hedgehog Fibre's blog! I spent an hour reading older posts, I very rarely have time to sit on the computer, clicking around & looking at new things to be inspired by so this was a real treat. Once I saw their studio space, I was in love. LOVE. I knew I had to try their yarn.

I found a destash on ravelry & a skein of Pheasant Sock landed in my hands. (Her shop sells out super fast, otherwise I would have purchased directly from her.) Wowzas. Can we talk about how incredibly SOFT this is?! I finished the socks I started this weekend and while they had cashmere, they aren't nearly as soft as this (remind me to tell you the story about why I shouldn't knit socks while taking theraflu ;)). As I was knitting today I'd stop and pet my knitting. Weird but true. I love the depth of the color in this yarn, I hope my photos can share with you how truly pretty it is!

I'm using the Simple Skyp pattern that I just plugged into the basic top up formula I like. It's interesting enough to be fun but not so hard that I have to pay attention. It seems like it's doing the yarn justice too!

I made myself a new knitting bag yesterday evening. I was looking on etsy a few nights ago & came across Timber and Leaf by Sarah Watts. I purchased 3 fat quarters: the bears, the foxes and the deer. I very rarely buy fabric anymore, I'm out of the "hip fabric" loop but this is really neat stuff. Totally pretty. I had a few bits of shape flex, various scraps, a little alphabet fabric that I cut & pieced to spell out YARN & voila. New knitting bag. Woo!

I managed to snap a few photos right before it started to rain again. I'm planning on spending the evening in front of the fire with my Woodland Sampler, I have 9 months of frames stitched up! High 5!

:):):)