Socks and such

Early this month, I got a shipping notice from Cookie A -- the first 2012 sock club shipment would be arriving soon. I decided that I should try to finish a pair of socks before the yarn came & I would want to start the new socks. So I rummaged around and found these:

Sock Hop Free Bird

The first sock was finished, and the second sock was about an inch long. The safety pins along the foot of the first sock are placed every 10th round, to make counting easier.  I'm finding some satisfying symmetry in knitting the same number of rounds for the leg and foot as I have stitches on the needles. In other words, a 64-stitch sock gets a leg that is 64 rounds long, and a foot that is 64 rounds from the end of heel shaping to the start of toe shaping. Oddly, it seems to work out that the foot is just the right length for me. These are just a generic sock, k2p2 rib on the legs, a short-row heel (my favorite is from the Queen Kahuna Crazy Toes & Heels book), and a stockinette foot.

The yarn is Sock Hop, from Crown Mountain Farms, colorway is Free Bird. It was a sock club selection, and I really wasn't too sure I liked it when it arrived. In fact, when I started these socks, I planned to give them as a gift. Then the magic happened, and I love the way the striping looks, and the sock is so cushy and soft. So I'll keep them for myself.


Valentine's Day was a snow day, so no school (2nd snow day we've had this winter -- the first was the day before).  My husband went to get the mail and told me when he got home that I hadn't been knitting fast enough. Sure enough, the yarn from the Cookie A sock club had arrived.  It is a gorgeous, soft Merino/Cashmere/Silk blend, from Alisha Goes Around, a yarn company with which I am completely unfamiliar.  The patterns arrived in my Ravelry library -- 2 sock patterns and 2 cookie recipes!  I have decided which of the sock patterns to make, but I do need to finish this Sock Hop sock. I want the needles out of this project to use in the new sock. They're Kollage square dpns, purchased at the Loopy Ewe a couple of years ago.

Richness (of Martens) Fingering in
Genevieve

This is a long weekend, so maybe I'll get one pair of socks finished and the other started. This will be the first time I can remember not having to use Presidents' Day as a make-up day for snow days. Yes, we do have days to make up, but since they happened just last week, we were surveyed for our opinion on whether to use Monday as a make-up day or not, and the overwhelming majority voted not!