Last weekend was the ginormous post-fire sale at Hilltop Yarn, and I’m still overwhelmed just thinking about it! It was absolutely amazing; the line just to get in the store was going down the block when I got there 10 minutes after they opened the door at 11 am, and I didn’t get rung up and out the door with my loot until around 3:30 pm. The lines were long and plentiful.

We are knitters and hookers, however, so we all had deep reserves of patience to dip into to survive the wait.

I was able to snatch up some lovely yarn and notions, so it was definitely a Saturday well spent, despite the controlled mayhem. (Yes, it was controlled mayhem. Trust me.) At one point, I just put my basket of yarn in one of the classrooms upstairs and went to Tully’s to knit while I waited for the line to go down. While there, I ran into a fellow sock knitter, who revealed the secret of knitting socks on circulars. Seriously, this whole idea has been confounding me for quite a while, and tonight I finally got the chance to give it a try.

So far, it’s been a trial getting used to the metal needles. The ladies at the Fiber Gallery talked me into these over the bamboo, and when they were backed up by a couple of other customers in the store, I felt I had to give them a try. One of the reasons I hate metal is because I can’t for the life of me keep the stitches from slipping off. This is the problem I had when my mom first tried to teach me to knit when I was younger; my stitches would slip off the metal needles, and my tension was far too tight. My tension problems were solved long ago, but the slick metal needles are still my foe. However, these socks (my first Socks that Rock, yay!) are flying along so quickly, which totally makes up for the occasional stitch I have to save from possible suicide off the needles. Don’t get me wrong, I still love knitting on my wooden dpns. But when I need to whip up some socks in a (relative) flash, I think circulars might be the way to go.