F-ing an O

My best friend has been in town the past week, so there has been minimal knitting, but rather a lot of drinking wine, talking about our lives and our plans and our goals, and more than a little shopping.

I did squeeze in a bit of knitting time, enough to (finally) finish the Sunshine Yarns Jaywalkers. I feel like I've been knitting them for such a long time that they barely even count as a finished object. But, here they are:



Edited to add project details:
Pattern: Jaywalker, by Grumperina
Needles: size 1 DPNs
Yarn: Sunshine Yarns in Daffodil
Comments: I would definitely knit this again, but I'd use size 2s.

They've been gifted to my friend Megan (she of the tiny feet), a mere three weeks late for her birthday, and she was very pleased. I also tried Eucalan for the first time while blocking the finished socks. It eradicated all traces of wooly itch and smelled awfully nice to boot. I've been converted - no more half-assing the blocking process using Method laundry detergent.

But now for the shopping! My company will likely be sending me on a number of trips in the next few months, to a variety of interesting locales (Singapore, SF, Milan, etc). This is exciting and terrifying all at the same time, but the real problem is that I don't have a solid two weeks of appropriate business attire to wear on this trip. I do not, in fact, own a single suit. My office is business casual, with an emphasis on the casual. My boss wears hoodies at least once a week, and not always on casual Fridays. The offices I will be visiting are not hoodie-friendly. Thus the shopping.

Enter my best friend. Besides being one of the smartest people I've ever met (and funny as hell), my best friend has a finely developed shopping instinct, honed by generations of Quinn women who view clothes shopping as very nearly a vocation. She takes this shit seriously. She finds an armload of clothes for you to try on, brings appropriate accessories into the dressing room to complement your outfit and is not the least bit shy about informing you that a particular item does nothing for you. She even re-hangs the clothes you've tried on while you try on the next batch, to expedite the process.

After an intensive afternoon and evening of shopping, I am now the proud owner of a new black suit and a number of funky-yet-professional shirts to wear beneath said suit. Plus quite a few remarkably cute tops and skirts, and cool jewelry. All I need is a pair of coordinating black pants and a good pair of power heels and I can rule the world. Or at least look the part. And I do clean up well, if I do say so myself.

In fact, Quinn's taste is so excellent overall that she, a non-knitter, even has excellent taste in yarn. When instructed to pick something from the sock yarn stash, she chose this for her socks.



Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock in Happy Stripe.

Now I just need to pick out a pattern...