lwood

I finally finished a pair of handmade socks for me (sheesh).

I've tried to make socks for myself three times now--whether they fit me or no, someone always pops up for whom the socks are absolutely perfect and there's just no keeping them at that point. Besides, if I don't keep them, I can't lament about darning them (I hates darning, precious, hates it forever).

But this weekend, one for me--Knitty's Pomatomous, in Classic Elite's Alpaca Sox, color 1810 (Marine). If you go to the page, it's the kelly-green to peacock-blue colorway.

To keep things interesting, and to have the scale patterns mirror each other without having to redo the designer's charts, I did one sock toe-up and the other cuff-down. I don't have a good picture of the completed pair, but

dpaxson did snap one of me holding them up, which you can see here (LJ's thumbnail here, click to enlarge:

This picture was taken on Muir Beach, as

dpaxson,

lferion, and I made our way up to southern Menocino County for the SCA West Kingdom's Beltane Coronation (the West Kingdom webmaster apparently decided this was also the weekend to redo the website, the last link is to the unmigrated data, and will not last long, I don't think).

dpaxson writes a bit more about it, with far prettier pictures, over at her place.

While ambling about, minding my own business, I had apparently bathed, not in LUSH's Seanik solid shampoo, but in pheromones designed to attract the attention of fiber arts Laurels (non-SCA folk: these are people who have won a Very Large Cookie in a particular art, in this case they have won the Very Large Cookie for Playing with String). This was most fortunate, as an old friend of

lferion gave me a very fine hand spinning lesson, and was duly impressed by my nålbinding and then--

Dread Viscountess Ceelie and her husband sell just about everything one might like in order to start period-appropriate Playing with String. Drop spindles, big-eyed needles as one would use for darning or nålbinding, yarn, roving, rigid heddle looms and the accessories thereof, BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE:

Her husband makes dichroic beads and sells them alongside the rods with which one may make one's own.

There is a significant proporation of my flist that just declared my doom over one or both of these things at this booth.

*facepalm*

So! On

lferion's advice ("Ceelie's always good for food.") I cadged a sandwich from them while purchasing My First Loom--a Beka SG-20 20" rigid heddle loom, for which a decent deal was struck including three heddles, one of which was already threaded so as to get the bitch-kittiest part out of the way first. This is a tabletop job, not a gigantor floor loom, which meant that I could bring it home without risking divorce, although a floor stand is available if I might like.

I've been throwing my leftover sock yarn stash at it for weft: bits and bobs of sport, fingering, and laceweight yarns on the "color study" warp Ceelie had done out of six shades of DMC's cotton/wool Senso. Here's some of the results, although the light's not good:

But no, I wasn't done paying their grocery bill for the weekend yet...I also bought about a dozen handmade beads, as my treasure/seidh necklace has recently broken and is anyway hungry. Furthermore, glass beads 'twixt the garb's brass boobies are more archaeologically correct than battle amber. HOWEVER! We do not replace--nono. We augment our battle amber with glass beads, thank you ever so. Alas, they're really unfit to be photographed by iPhone and lamplight, you'll just have to take my word on it that they're pretty. You would be correct to suspect, too, that many are blue.

And that's how I spent my ~~Summer~~ Beltane Vacation.

Hokay, I fall sleepies now.

-- Lorrie