Yarn + Pattern = Socks

Finally, finally, I received the yarn I wanted for my sock pal! Getting the yarn was quite an experience, because I wanted this specific bamboo yarn by Zitron as it has a very good reputation. Plus, it had to be a solid color, as I'm planning on knitting a pattern, and I think the more complicated the pattern, the better it gets with solid colors.

The only problem was... this yarn is not sold in Munich. Nowhere. And I found only 1 online-store that sells this yarn in solids. Shipping is 5€ (almost 7US$). I only needed 1 (one) skein, and didn't see why I should pay more than half of what the skein costs for shipping, on top of the yarn price. So I asked the company which shop in Munich sold this particular bamboo yarn. They sent me a few addresses, only one in Munich, and off I went. Turns out that this particular shop sells Zitron yarns, but not the sock range. Damn! But: the owner, a very nice lady, offered that if I know the color I want, she could make a few phone calls and try to get the yarn for me. (Did I mention I *heart* this store?) So, that's what we did. Granted, it took a little while, but I was in no hurry and 2 weeks after I ordered the yarn through this lady, I came to pick it up. Happy me! It was totally worth the wait.

My sock pal didn't leave me any (!) color preferences, so I just took a wild guess what colors she might like after looking at her blog. This is what I came up with:

pronatura_moss, originally uploaded by d.knit.

The colorway is moss. I quite like it, but I don't think I'd wear it. I don't mean this in a degrading way; there are just colors that I like, but they wouldn't suit me much (yeah, like this one here!) The yarn is really lovely, nice and soft and squishy. And it has a nice shimmer to it, not too shiny, just right. The bamboo part is 25% and is supposed to make the yarn lighter and a bit less warming; the wool share is 75% which guarantees elasticity and stuff, just like in other regular sock yarns.

As for the pattern, I chose this one:


It's called "Dancing into May", and it's a pattern of the Socken-Kreativ-Liste (Creative Socks List), a yahoo group that I recently joined. If you're interested in the group, don't let the language scare you off. There's tons of members (over 1,000), many of them are English speakers themselves, and most of the patterns are offered in English as well.

Anyways, I'm looking forward to how the socks turn out! I already started them the other day, but didn't get past a few rows on the cuff - I just turned the heel on my second Baudelaire sock, so I'm kinda into that right now. But the Sockapalooza Sock should take over soon!