First there was Clogapalooza, but that doesn't count because it was gift knitting with a calendar-imposed deadline.
Then, right before Christmas I decided I NEEDED a pair of red and green socks. This is because at the Stow-Munroe Falls Public Library, where I work, we do this thing in December where we make a calendar with things on it like "Wear Green Day" and "Christmas Shirt or Sweater Day" and so on, and then all the staff tries to remember to wear whatever it is on that day. There are also games and drawings and so on, and it's a lot of fun. (It's just us; the patrons don't have to wear anything special.) Well, it happens that I was the one who put together the calendar this year, and it happens that I decided the Monday of Christmas Week should be "Wear Red And Green Day". And I decided that my red and green needed to be a new pair of socks.
Fortunately, this was right after the conclusion of Clogapalooza, and I had a leftover skein of green Knitpicks Wool of the Andes in Forest Heather (Dad's clogs) and one-and-a-bit skeins of Cranberry WOTA (my friend Jeannette's clogs). So I was all set. I dug out my Barbara Walker Treasuries and rummaged around until I found the fish-hook/candy cane lace pattern, diddled around with the repeats until I had a reasonable number, and cast on. Since they were worsted weight, they went fast.
To be strictly accurate, this one counts as both "startitis" and "finishitis", doesn't it?
Then, during Christmas week, I spent rather a lot of hours hanging out at my Dad's house with him and my brother from Chicago who was in for the week. There was food and fun and a bunch of movies from Netflix, and a great deal of football.
In the last two or three years, for various reasons, I increasingly find myself in the presence of football. Now, since they started using computers to paint the line of scrimmage and the first-down line on the field, this is all a lot more comprehensible - thank you, computer dudes, for that! However, I'm still not the kind of person who knows the players by name, or even the positions other than "quarterback", so I need some chemical assistance in getting through the games. My chemical of choice is called "wool".
Over the week my brother was here, I knit the second half of a pair of Cat Bordhi's Coriolis socks from her "New Pathways" book. I cast them on several months ago as my "walking around knitting" since they were being knit from my first hand-dyed KnitPicks Sock Blank, but they kept getting pushed back in the queue by more urgent projects. Well, now they came into their own, and aside from a little cursing when doing the slightly-unfamiliar-in-style heel, they were very easy and satisfying:
And I even had a few inches of my sock blank left!
And today - actually about ten minutes ago - I finished my modified Belle Epoque socks from Two At A Time Socks by Melissa Morgan-Oakes, although I did not use her two-at-a-time method. I have my own. I knit my socks using the magic loop method - I started using two circs, but the third or fourth time I forgot which needle I was supposed to be using and knitted all the stitches onto the same circ, I decided maybe the Lord wanted me to knit Magic Loop. I usually cast on a sock from each end of the ball onto its own circ and work on them in parallel, so I still remember my mods and don't suffer from second sock syndrome.
My friend Sarah gave me the lovely orchid-pink Opal yarn. It doesn't feel very soft when you're knitting it, but when I put the socks on they just hug my feet and give them a little elastic massage. I may never take them off. I modified the pattern by only doing the lace/"coin" pattern on the front of the sock (I continued the plain 1x1 rib across the back), which may have saved my sanity because I found out that I just detested knitting the columns of faggoting stitch on either side of the "coins".
This does not bode well for my desire to knit the Melon Shawl from Victorian Lace Today.
For those of you who may be wondering why you haven't seen me knitting my Mini Mochi Prize Yarn from Crystal Palace, the reason is this:
Mini Mochi seems to be a bit thicker than most of my sock yarn, so I think I need to use at least a 2.5 mm (US size 1.5) needle on it. However, a couple of weeks ago I had a Christmas party and so I cleaned up the house and put up the Christmas tree.
See the brown closet door behind the tree in my sock photos?
That's where all my sock needles are, except for the ones I've recovered from finishing up socks. These happen all to be 2.25 mm needles, so until I take down Christmas, I cannot knit Mini Mochi.
Don't think, however, that I am now sock-deprived:
That's more of my own hand-dyed Knitpicks Essential, in a self-striping pattern I refer to as "Autumn Stripes" in my head. I am in love with how this is knitting up! I think I'll try Cat Bordhi's "Sky" architecture on it.
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