Penelope Socks Are Finished!

Once upon a time, there was a Queen named Penelope who loved to work with fiber. She could knit and weave and make the most gorgeous, intricate things. She also had a husband who didn't really understand what it took to be a good husband, but he went off to fight a war and then had some adventures on his way home from war, all of which were meant to teach him how to be a good husband. It took him ten years to get home. Like I said, the man had a few things to learn.

But Penelope understood what it took to be a good wife. Faith and fidelity are both very important ingredients, and she was filled with both. She waited and waited for her fool of a husband to return from the war, and everyone told her to give up waiting. But she didn't. She held fast.

Penelope was a queen in her own right, and plenty of power-hungry men would have been happy to marry her and become king. In fact, they showed up in her home every day and begged her to accept one of them as her new husband. After a few years of this ceaseless pestering, she finally made the men a promise. As soon as she finished weaving a new rug, she would decide which of them to marry.

She had no intention of marrying any of them, of course. So by day, with these men all around her, she wove her rug in full view of them all. And by night, in the secrecy of her bedroom, she and her maid unpicked all the stitches.

Eventually her husband -- whose name was Odysseus in some languages and Ulysses in others -- made his way home to her. So Penelope was spared the need to pick a new husband from her suitors and was at last able to finish the damn rug.

Now you know why I call these the Penelope socks. I swear they secretly unknit themselves at night when I wasn't looking. But they're done now, and let that be an important lesson to somebody. Maybe even me.

Yarn: Lorna's Laces sock yarn, colorway sherbet
Needles: 2.5 mm, size 1US DPNs.
Gauge: 9.5 stitches to the inch. Which might have had something to do with how long it took to knit them.
Pattern: Standard sock recipe. 1.5" 2x2 rib cuff, 7" total leg length, double reinforced heel flap, and I swear about 4,000 stitches per gusset round.

Also...did we notice there's an actual picture up there? I figured out how to reset the software so that I can transfer only new pictures from my camera to my computer. And they transfer into files which I have some control over. Not much, but some. Still having trouble editing, but it's getting better. Who knows, this might just turn into a real knitting blog again.