FO: Mona Lisa Dragon Rider

So you know how a few weeks ago I told you about drinking the koolaid and falling down the rabbit hole of stripey socks?  Well, here is further proof of my addiction.

This was my Camp Loopy 1 project.  The prompt was to knit with a yarn I had never used before, which was the perfect invitation to pick up another skein of self-striping.  The Loopy Ewe carries a lot of lines I had never tried, but I finally landed on Desert Vista Dyeworks because this colorway, Mona Lisa, was such a departure from my usual socks.

What really makes these socks is the pattern.  Alice Yu's Shur'tugal is one of those magical patterns that looks great in any kind of colorway and so was perfect for self-striping.  It kept the color without obscuring the pattern and was a lot of fun to knit.  Seriously, every time I find myself wanting to knit socks I start with Socktopus.  That book is amazing.

To find more great FOs, check out the gang over at Tami's Amis!

A Loopy Start

There is an up side to putting yourself under house arrest.  Aside from driving my husband crazy and getting cabin fever, I got quite a bit of knitting done on my Camp Loopy project yesterday.

I think these may be the tallest socks I have ever knitted.  I like a short leg to my socks, but the challenge requires the use of at least 375 yards of yarn, so I want to be sure that my socks meet these requirements.  Plus this Desert Vista Dyeworks is stunning and I want to use as much of it as possible.  For this challenge I pulled out Alice Yu's Socktopus.  Shur'tugal is a free download on Ravelry, but it is also included in the book, which makes it the perfect choice for an afternoon spent watching Hemlock Grove on the kindle because I can just flip through my book rather than just have to pause to constantly to check that I'm still following the pattern. (Side note:  Why am I addicted to this show?  Can anyone save me?  It's not even that good! And they just keep reusing the same dead body just with different pieces in different locations.  How is that ok?).   I love how intuitive without being completely memorizable this pattern is.  Not quite a read while I knit pattern, but it is a nice change after the swaths of reverse stockinette of my hooded vest and the long purl back rows of the shawl.

Is anyone else doing Camp Loopy?  Did you do a marathon cast on day?