FO: Araucania Ranco Socks

FO: Plain Socks
Yarn: Araucania Ranco Multi
Needles: 1.5US dpns

Notes:
This yarn is hard to photograph. The greens and browns melt together into a dark lump. The best description I can give is this -- looking at this yarn in person is like looking at a pile of new fall leaves in the bottom of a lake. Orange, rust, dark green, muddy brown, twiggy gray, interspersed with an occasional flash of blue water. The colors are very appealing in person.

The hand, well, that's a bit less appealing. The yarn has a bit of crunch to it, almost like Regia. I know from experience that Regia wears like iron and softens over time, and I hope the Araucania will perform likewise. It's a bit thinner than Regia, but in other ways, it's very similar.

This leaves me three pairs of socks OTN. Two are at the heel of the first sock. One is maybe an inch into the second sock, so that one will be my next desk sock to work on when dictation frees up my hands. I would like to cut down on the number of projects OTN, so I'm going to apply a "finish two/then cast on one" approach. Any two will do!

Random Friday

This is a new sock I cast on last week at the lake house. I didn't do much more than cast it on then, because I was still hot and heavy on the windmill beret. But it is living on my desk now, and thanks to the miracle that is voice recognition software, I'm making pretty good progress on it without even making time for it. I just pick away at it while I'm working on other things. Nice and easy.

In other news, I cast something new on Thursday afternoon during the open knit. I can't show it here yet, because it's a surprise, and showing it might spoil the surprise. Enough said.

I'm more than a little bit obsessed with new projects right now. This is all Tricia's fault. She told me that she's going to be getting in a stock of Spindrift this fall, and now I can't stop thinking about stranded cardigans. And stranded pullovers. And stranded hats, gloves, socks. The girls around the back table at Nana's Knitting shop are all talking about knitting the endpaper mitts by Eunny Jang. Those could be fun too. But at the moment,I'm torn between a pattern from the Ann Feitelson book, an Alice Starmore cardigan, the cardigan on the cover of Meg Swanson's knitting book, and the fair isle cardigan in the Veronik Avery book. It's a tough decision, and I'm sure I will change my mind several more times before the Spindrift actually arrives. Yet I can't stop thinking about what I'm going to make.

It doesn't stop there though. The Olympic knitting poll is closed, and the winner is the fliptop mittens. I'm excited about knitting them, but I also want to knit the other items on the poll, too. I keep thinking I should cast on the lace T-shirt now, even though it's about 97° outside right now, and you know what the heat does to knitting with mohair. It's not good.

A big thank you to dreamsweaver who has been such a big help in trying to plan a long-distance party in San Francisco at the end of the month. She's familiar with the city, and I'm not. Plus, it's 2000 miles away, so I can't exactly get familiar. My knitting group between them seems to know everything. I love that. Whether I need to check a Spanish swear word or figure out where to have dinner in San Francisco, they have great advice for me. Talk about a smart bunch of women.

I intend to spend this weekend playing catch up. I have so much to do in order to get ready for this conference, I don't know how going to get it all done. So I've canceled all plans for this weekend. And unlike a couple weeks ago when that meant I could sit and knit for the entire weekend, this time I'm working. I've already rocketed through two manuscripts today, wrote a newsletter, and responded to about 50 e-mails. All this while the cleaning ladies were here. Not a bad start for a working weekend.

However, when I take my breaks, I will be watching reruns of Mad Men. They've got the whole first season up on On Demand right now, so for those of you who've been hearing me talk about this show nonstop, you might want to check out a few episodes. The show was completely addictive, and that's despite the fact that there's not a single decent human being in the cast. They are all despicable, and I love every single one of them. And I can't wait for them all to get what they deserve.

So there you have it. A totally random post for a totally random Friday.