Eye Candy Friday: Socks and the Sweet Green Icing

I knit myself another pair of Autumny socks for Socktoberfest. I love them muchly. They will be worn for the first time tomorrow night. The photo's don't do the colors justice. I had weird lighting outside when I took the photos on the 16th. We have weirder lighting due to all the smokey haze now so we'll have to live with these. All Photos Clickety Biggety!

Here are my Sock Stats.

Cast On: Friday October 5, 2007 - During that trashy yet yummy vampire show Moonlight. *purr* I love me a good sexy vampire. So anguished and tender yet strong and ferocious. *L*
Cast Off: Thursday October 11, 2007 - During CSI :P
Pattern: Hiiumaa Socks from Knitting on the Road by Nancy Bush. I didn't do any color changes, just used the basic construction of the pattern. I think it's the perfect basic sock pattern. :D This is the same pattern I used for my Honey Socks.
Yarn: Trekking XXL Sock Yarn: Aquarell 150 (Here's what the color looks like in person.)
Yardage: The skien of yarn started with 459 yards and I have 92 yards leftover, so I used 367 yards.
Yarn Source: Pioneer Yarn Company - Procured on a day trip out to Minden with a group of friends. One lady saw the yarn and insisted I buy it because she thought it would go with the sweater I'm knitting for myself. It does, and who am I to say no to sock yarn. :P
Needles: Brittany Needles - Birch - US #3 / 3.25 mm - 5" (In retrospect I would have used the 2's like I intended... The socks are a bit larger than I need, but not too much. Next time I'll get gauge and they'll be perfect.
Again: Hell's Yeah!!! I love this Pattern muchly. Love the yarn muchly.
For?  Me.
Notes: I knit these socks faster than I have knit any other pair of socks. I was very pleased with how quickly they knit up. I think it was due partly to the fact I wanted to see what the self patterning yarn would look like. That is so exciting seeing how the yarn will come alive. :D This was the first time I have knit with Trekking. LOVE. These were also the tallest socks I ever knit for myself. They are as tall as I'm comfy with unless I want to do a full knee sock... which I am thinking about for a future pair of socks. 

Knitting on now? On Monday October 8th during Hero's I cast on to a new pair of socks for My Best Friend. *Happy Otter Dance* I have high hopes of finishing them by next Wednesday if not sooner.

Here's another photograph of the socks.

See that Pumpkin, Bob, there, his ass is gonna die later. Roasted and then made into my famous super yummy Pumpkin Cookies with Cream Cheese Icing. Some will be frozen and mailed out to a certain pink ball of yarn wearing glasses and Rendog. Let's hope they travel well. o.0 The rest will be enjoyed by the honey and some peoples here locally. Goodbye Bob you are a good Pumpkin. A well loved Pumpkin and now you will also be a yummy pumpkin. *evil grin*

Now for some Friday Eye Candy. This is the cake I made for Rendog on his birthday.

I will never bake this cake again. It took so long to make it and it was rather crappy and should never be eaten again. Oooooh Noooooo!!!

Yes it is a MacArthur's Park Cake. Complete with Sweet Green Icing Melting down. *GRIN*

Normally I'd make up my own recipe based upon my years of experience. Not this time though. I got it into my silly head that I'd use a fancy schmancy recipe for my brothers cake in the hopes that it would be the best cake ever.

I didn't think that through. See the recipe called for a pound of butter for the cake and a pound of butter for the icing. Fuck That. o.0

So I sorta half did the recipe, leaving out about a pound and a half of butter yet not adding in any sort of fruit puree as I normally would. *sigh* That's why fruit cakes are such a joy. You can do anything you like to them and they generally come out well. Not so the chocolate cake from scratch. (Or at least I wasn't prepared for it at the time.)  Oh I could have used a box cake, but box cake tastes like ass, nasty nasty ass. Or at least as close to ass as one can imagine ass would taste. :P

We had the cake after a day of much celebrating. The three of us managed to choke down a piece of this dry cake, but the next day after Rendog flew home it wasn't touched. It stayed in the fridge for a week in honor of him.

So now I will work on making a good chocolate cake that doesn't call for a ton of butter and sugar to make it palatable. I'm thinking I'll try making a chocolate fruit based cake. Start with what I know. Chocolate with Raspberry will be my first attempt. Someday after I get over my love affair with Pumpkins that is. ;^) I also have an idea for an apple and cranberry creation that will need to be explored at some point. Heh.

In other news I was out of town last week or so. Got home a few nights ago. I'll go into detail about my travels in my next post. This one is quite long enough don'tcha think. o.0

Comments

[Cookie]

She's back!

Those are come good looking socks! Well done, you! Isn't Trekking just the best sock yarn?

I'm sorry about your brother's cake, but at least you learned something, right?

Have a good time killing Bob!

[Scoutj]

Those socks are so pretty! And dang the cake looks good.

[Scoutj]

Well it DOES look good!

[Devorah]

Welcome back! Was the product of Bob yummy? Are your socks toasty warm? Inquiring minds want to know.

[norma]

I love those socks!!!

BUT what do you have against two pounds of butter? Hee. I love using buttermilk in a cake for the richness and texture factor without all the fat... (although I figure it's a cake -- let it be fat)

[Robin]

Hello, I was trying to find your email address somewhere and couldn't. I just want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for the entrelac tutorial!! I have been trying for 2 years to knit entrelac from directions on the internet and just gave up. Today I decided to try again. I found yours. I have 4 tiers done and I understand it and I have it memorized. My scarf is turning out beautiful so far. We'll see how the bind off goes, but I don't anticipate a problem. I also taught myself to knit socks a couple months ago and am on the 1st one of pair 5. Thank you again. Sorry for the long comment.

[Mary-Anne]

Thank you for the lovely entrelac tutorial. I want to ask you if you would mind if my local shop owner uses it to teach people entrelac. thank you.