I really am a sock slut. It’s getting out of hand. I cast on yet another pair of socks today. See, I’d been playing around with the pattern for my Sockapalooza pal’s socks, and I finally figured out something that would work, I thought. But of course, I wanted to try it out right away. So I did. Because I have no self control.

Mosaic socks for my Sockapalooza pal, done in Koigu

It’s 64 sts, done on size 1s. It fits, but just barely. Of course, it fits me, and so it’s hard to know how well it’ll fit my pal. She says her ankles are quite narrow, so maybe it’ll work. It’s just so hard to know. I may knit a bit more on it before I make my decision whether to keep going or to rip it out and start over after I make some pattern alterations. At any rate, I do like the way it looks, so that’s a plus.

Meanwhile, all my other discarded WIPs are crying because I’m not paying them enough attention.

All my sad unfinished WIPs

Starting at the top left, going clockwise, we’ve got (a) Get to the Point socks (I started the second one yesterday, too), (b) Sgt. DayGlo socks, (c) my new Sockapalooza pal’s socks, (d) my SP10 pal’s fingerless gloves, (e) my ribbed handspun socks, (f) a lone Boysenberry sock (still need to make its mate), and (g) a lone Merino Lace sock (yet another one lacking its mate). That’s lots of small projects on lots of small needles. It’s a good thing I’ve got lots of dpns to go around!

And when I haven’t been knitting, I’ve been playing over at Ravelry.com. My god, it’s addictive. One girl over in the forums said that she may never get around to blogging again because she was spending all her free time on this site. And I totally get what she means. There’s so much to do! So much to see!

The way it’s set up, each user has a “notebook,” where they store info on their projects (FOs, WIPs, UFOs, and even planned projects that you’ve got queued up), stashes, needles, etc. If you’re a designer, your patterns are linked to your account. If you’re a dyer or a spinner, and you sell your wares, your yarns are also linked to your account. There’s an ever-growing database of yarns and patterns, and when you add a project, it’s then linked to the pattern and yarn used in the main database. If you go to a pattern page, for example, you can see all the people who’ve knit it, and look at their photos and read their notes and comments.

The photos are all imported through your Flickr account, and it’s really very neat and clean. You go to someone’s project page, and you see a table of all their projects.

My projects page on Ravelry

And then if you click on one of the projects, it takes you to a page with more photos and information like yarn, needles, gauge, etc. And the stash page is awesome, too. You can add all your stash items (which might be daunting for some… it was only 39 items for me…), adding info like quantity, colorway, and dyelot. And in the future, they’re even planning on setting up a sale / swap section. I can’t even begin to imagine how handy that’ll be for people who need just one more skein of x yarn in y dyelot. You know?.

My stash page on Ravelry

And all that’s just the tip of the iceberg! There’s a “people” page, where you can search for users, browse new users and look through newly added FOs. There’s a “patterns” section, where you can search or browse for patterns and see how many people knit what and what the results looked like. And a “yarns” section, where you can find just about any yarn known to man – from staples like Rowan to little-known gems from the most obscure indy dyers. And if you see a yarn or a pattern you like, you can add it to your favorites, comment on it, and/or add it to your queue, all through a single click of your mouse.

This site might be the death of me. I’m serious.

But it’s got my mind going a million miles a minute, planning new ideas and remembering old ones. For example, I’d nearly forgotten the 21.5 oz of worsted weight undyed silk / merino yarn I got from Ellen’s Half-Pint Farm last summer. But when I started photographing everything to add to my online stash record, I saw it, handled it, and started dreaming about it again. If my calculations are correct, I’ve got just shy of 1700 yds of the stuff, which ought to be more than enough for a short-sleeve version of Sahara.

Sahara, from Stitch Diva Studios, and Ellen’s Half-Pint Farm’s Merino/Silk Worsted

It might be a tad tricky to make it work for that particular pattern, though. You’re supposed to get 20 sts / 4″ on size 7s with this yarn, and the pattern calls for 18 sts / 4″. And while I haven’t knit up a swatch yet, just looking at the yarn, I have a feeling I’m actually going to get more than 20 sts. So… we’ll see. I’ll swatch up a bit and see if I can’t get gauge, and then we’ll go from there. And then, of course, is the difficult decision of what color(s) to dye the yarn! Oh, fun.

Of course, I can’t start any of this until I whack out a couple of those WIPs…