Lots of stash, not much knitting!

All of the above sock yarns have been bought or swapped for my sock blanket. It's so nice to get your hands on so much stash and know exactly what project it's for! The best thing is that when I've bought a ball, I know that I will get more yarn from it. What I mean is that from each 50g ball I get 5 10g mini balls. 1 goes into my blanket, 4 are for swaps. So I get 5 different sock yarn mini balls from one 50 g ball. It's a great way of satisfying my addiction to sock yarn!

The blanket is growing slowly, will post a pic when I've got to 50 squares!

Of course, now that I've cast on for the Apres Surf Hoodie, the blankie is going even more slowly! I'm really enjoying this knit so far:

It's going to be a lovely hoodie, so feminine and pretty. Really not my usual style but it will be nice to wear something light & airy on summer evenings. The RYC Cashcotton is yummy, very soft, especially surprising considering the cotton content. And I love the colour, such a pretty blue.

You would think that I would be knitting like fury with such lovely projects on the go, wouldn't you? Well I would but things keep distracting me! I ordered a copy of Elizabeth Zimmerman's 'Knitters Alamanac' which is keeping me amused. I've never read any of her books before but I think I need to buy more as I really would like to be able to have the courage to make pattern mods which EZ really encourages.

And, of course, then there's the distraction that is the mighty Ravelry!

When I'm not swapping yarns or posting on the forums, I'm looking at so many beautiful projects that I lose track of time and the knitting lies beside me looking forlorn. Last night was worse than usual! I'd read that the Ravelry shop was about to open and I wasn't going to miss out!!

Fast forward 3 hours and many thousands of F5 presses later....I was lucky enough to get in quickly as one of 5 test shoppers to try out the checkout process before the shop went live!! I was SO excited as I managed to order one of the very few Tote bags in stock, a Ravelry pin and a T-shirt! I then spent the next two hours worrying that I'd missed out due to a hiccough in the checkout but it appears that all is well and my goodies are on their way!! Woo Hoo!!

So no, not a lot of knitting has been done....but there has been lots of stash enhancement going on! It's hard to say which of these two activities I enjoy most - what about you?

Alternatives to Ravelry??

Mmmmmmmmmm.........

The other day I bought Jomp's a bag of Revels. As he ate them, trying to avoid the coffee flavoured ones, I wasted yet another hour of my life on Ravelry. He, being a man of no hobbies, was utterly bored and whilst he munched, he came up with a number of plays on the theme of Ravelry:

• Revelry for lovers of Revels

• Navelry for those who like navels:

• Devilry for followers of the dark lord:

• Gavelry for collectors of little wooden hammers:

• My most favourite I've saved for last. Savillery for fans of Sir Jimmy Saville!

Can you think of any more?

Revelry at Ravelry??

Today I received my invite to join Ravelry as a beta tester. It looks fab so far! I can see that I'm going to get even less done ( knitting, housework, laundry, whatever!) than normal as it's so much fun to plug in all your wips, stash, future projects etc! And when you're bored of that, you can then spend hours looking at everyone else's stuff!!

I put my name on the waiting list a good few weeks ago and waited patiently til my invite arrived. Although it seems that some people are not so patient and were harassing the developers! It's such a shame that people give up their time to help others and all they get is hassle! I, for one, send my thanks to Jess and Casey (the owners/developers) of Ravelry as this is going to be an amazing knitters resource when it's up and running.

Now, must go do some laundry..... or shall I just have another 15 minutes surfing?!