And We're Off!

This is not precisely how I planned to kick off the Summer of Socks. I thought I would cast on something plain and something patterned and have two pairs going at once. Instead, the siren's song of this delicious Mountain Colors Bearfoot lured me to cast on a plain sock to show off its incredible colors. I can't find the ballband for this one, but I think the colorway is named something like Cherry Bark or Black Cherry or Cherry Crush. Cherry something, anyway. Those little shots of fuschia-red are exactly the color of a ripe sour cherry. I bought this yarn for the heavy dose of burgundy, but I'm falling in love with the sour cherry and the occasional surprises of navy. Very, very beautiful.

This will be my carry-around sock for a while. It will be in my purse most of the time, though at the moment, it's sitting on my desk. I can't seem to put it down today, thereby giving new meaning to "carry-around socks." It's knitting at about 8 stitches to the inch on 2s.















I also started the Koigu. This yarn has been marinating in my stash for about three months, and it's a miracle I held out that long. My much-beloved purple mixed with teal a/k/a my current obsession? How perfect can it get?

I do love this yarn, too. The color changes are like little miracles. I swear they somehow manage to dye the core of the yarn one color, and the outer fuzz another, during those color changes. I only wish my camera could do it justice.

These will be knit on my favorite needles, the Crystal Palace 1.5s, which yields about 8.5 stitches to the inch.

Goals

We were asked to post goals for the Summer of Socks-along. I can't say I really have any, except to whittle down my sock yarn stash as much as possible. I did sign up for the "Most Socks" contest, but The Wendy is doing the Summer of Socks, and there's no way -- none whatsoever -- that I can hope to keep up with her. That woman knits like the wind. If I could achieve 50% of her speed, I'd be insufferable with pride.

They also have a sock design contest, which I considered briefly but rejected. Any of you who watched me tear out my hair -- and my stitches -- last fall with the disastrous toe-up-with-reinforced-heel experiment will be breathing a sigh of relief right about now. Some of us are better off leaving the designing to the designers.

So I guess my goals are, first, to be a good -alonger and post my pictures and cheer on the other -alongers. Second, I want to knit a lot of socks. Six pairs in three months would be a pretty good clip, and eight would have me celebrating. Anything more than that would be shocking, but who knows? I signed up for "Most Socks" because I wanted to push myself, and I don't really know how far I'll get.

Guess we'll just have to wait until September to find out. And until then, I plan to enjoy the ride.