What a yarn!!

What a Yarn

There’s one love that we all share: yarn. Blog about a particular yarn you have used in the past or own in your stash, or perhaps one that you covet from afar.

Hands down, Trekking XXL. Best. Sock. Yarn. It is the yarn that made me want to make socks in the first place. I was staying in New Mexico for my dissertation field work. My sister had come to visit and we had a fabulous time. One of the things we did was visit the LYS, Unravel*. (There it was trekking XXL in vibrant really fun colors that just screamed: "YOU NEED TO MAKE SOCKS!". I couldn't knit in the round back then, and really had just gotten back into knitting seriously. The project I was working on at the time was a sweater for hub. It was black acrylic. (What was I thinking???) I hadn't really gotten to into LYS and nice yarns yet, just a little bit. It was this trip, and in retrospect, that Trekking XXL, that really refueled the magic for me. This was, gosh, 5 years ago now. Anyways, I thought that there was no way I could knit on double pointed needles, nevermind small enough to make socks, so the trekking XXL stayed in the store.

Flash forward a week or so and my husband came to visit. We went down to Juarez and bought cowboy boots for ourselves. His were a little tight and he wanted "thinner socks", but couldn't really find any in the stores. My crazy lightbulb went off and the madness began.

I bought a book, returned to the store, and bought my first ball of trekking and a size E crochet hook and I was off to the races. By the time we were headed home a month later, I had already used two balls and was well into my 3rd. These socks and that trekking yarn were also the start of my crafty blogging. Up until that point my blog had just been about my trip so friends and family could keep up with me. These images are rescued from the original 2005 blog posts on them.

For the record, as ugly as all that stuff looks, we still wear it. Those crocheted socks rock, and those fingerless mitts have spent more days and nights in the field with me then I care to count. Hub, who is affectionately nicknamed "the destructor" because he is unbelievably hard on everything, just noticed that those red socks are just starting to wear thin...5 years people! Now that's good sock yarn.

Once I learned to knit in the round, I expanded my sock yarn collection, but I knit at least 3 more pairs with trekking and there is still another ball in my stash. What a yarn!.

*this btw was a great little store that was for sale when I visited last summer, their webpage is down, so I'm guessing it doesn't exist anymore, which makes me sad