i heart eisaku noro

noro is one of those brands that inspires strong feelings in knitters. we either love it, or we hate it. i am in the love-camp, but hadn’t worked with it that much until recently, unlike a certain stellar knitter-slash-good buddy, who professes her love for noro at every opportunity. i had made a few scarves out of it, i had fondled much noro, but until eisaku noro decided to go for broke and join the sock-yarn revolution, i hadn’t used his yarns very extensively. sure, we have a bunch of kureyon here, quite a few colors of silk garden, and a goodly amount of silk garden lite. but this sock yarn is, ahem, and the pun is definitely intended, knocking my socks off!

i have made 3 socks, 2 for me, one for the plastic feet, out of color 180. what a dream! and, i have embarked on another two pairs for myself – colors 188 and 164. i am doing one of each on two circulars, both for the fun of watching the two socks battle on the needles, and to ensure that i get two more pairs of these fabulous socks for myself.

a lot of folks have asked about washing. i have NOT run these through a cycle in the washing machine, as the ball band clearly states to hand wash in cool water, but did have an ah-hah! moment the other day while reading the yarn harlot. she talked about how she ‘hand-washes’ her hand-knitted wares. duh! use the washing machine as a wash-tub, and then run the spin cycle, and then lay flat to dry! (much faster than hand-washing in the sink, lemmetellyou) i have washed my first pair a few times and they have softened up like crazy and are even more beautiful and wonderful and fabulous than they were prior to washing and i am in looove with them. i am in love with the kureyon sock yarn. i am in love with eisaku noro. i don’t care what people say about the vegetable matter inherent in noro. i don’t care what the naysayers say about the sock yarn’s single-ply-seeming-two-ply, or the sticking-on-itself factor, because this yarn is eisaku noro at his finest, and i want to have as many pairs of these as possible. i don’t even care that i have to knit these on size zero needles. i heart them. so there.