Thelonius Monster Socks (May/July 2011)

Since I've been such crap about taking photos of Sheep and Wool Fests I attended this year and the items purchased therein, I figured I would show a finished project from yarn actually purchased at a Sheep and Wool Fest this year:

The Thelonius Monster Socks.



Yes, I finished these one weekend morning in the summer and modeled them while the cats were eating. Yes, those are bloomers I'm wearing; Mike bought me a pair a few years ago for me to wear as summer PJs. I have a sleeveless cotton shirt that I wear with them (that I have a hard time believing was sold as a shirt, since it is lightweight, white, and quite diaphanous, but that's Ann Taylor Loft for you. I'm still confused by shirts that you need to buy more shirts to wear under them - very clever marketing - and even more confused by the concept of layers and summer clothes).





In my blog break, I didn't lose the art of the tangent, did I? HEY GUYS DID YA MISS ME AND MAH RAMBLING WAYS????

I didn't even mention Gibson's quizzical look at my feet while Luciano goes on eating.

I got even better pictures of these on the way home from Rhinebeck this year:





I left little footmarks in the dust on the inside of Mike's windshield and, as of yesterday, it's still there. Should I be telling you that? Our car, it is filthy.

Oh, fuck, in my rambling and time-traveling ways I forgot to mention the yarn! THE YARN! It's Jennifer's Flock Sock from Holiday Yarns, in the colorway "Fiji". I purchased it at the New Hampshire Sheep and Wool Festival in May of this year, and, as you can see, I cast on with it fairly quickly. I really love this yarn, and had used it before for my Bacon and Lattice (Hold the Tomato) Socks.

The pattern is Thelonius Sock by Cookie A. I'm torn between thinking her patterns are absolutely brilliant and fun to knit, and thinking they are overly complicated and crazy-making. It really depends upon the day and how frustrated I am becoming with flipping pages back and forth and going to Chart A, B, C or D. No disrespect intended, of course, but I usually need to knit something completely mindless after I finish one of her patterns. I feel the same way about Tsock Tsarina - her patterns are AMAZING and clever, but holy shit! They take up so many brain cells to knit. Both are great for winter knitting (or sick day knitting) when I can sit at home in my PJs and put something mindless on TV like a Beverly Hills, 90210 rerun or a zombie movie I've seen a million times already. They aren't good for knitting on a car, train, or while watching subtitled movies (although the plain stockinette foot part of a current WIP of mine, Oktoberfest, is fine for such knitting).

I'm going to leave this post with a sense of pride that I have made it through half of my 2011 FOs and don't have much further to go! I just have a few that I never even photographed (and one that I don't even remember what the pattern or yarn was - yeah, I gotta go check that out).