FO: Sockotta Socks

Take a close look at those toes. There's just the thinnest slice of green there, where I kitchenered the toes closed. It's a perfect match on the stripes, in fact, and even the jogs in the striping come in exactly the same spots all up and down the socks.

And yes, the length of the legs and feet is identical, to the eighth-inch.

That's the best thing I can say about the Sockotta. Crissy, if you're out there, I bet you would also appreciate the striping in this yarn. You share my obsession with matching feet.

I have another skein of Sockotta in Christmas red. I've decided that eventually, when I get around to it, I'll double the yarn and knit dish cloths as Christmas grab bag gifts. This yarn would be great for scrubbing pots. It's got that stringy, kitchen-cotton feel to it.

So that's another FO in the 2008 column before my self-imposed ban on new projects ends. I'm debating my weekend knitting. Fulmar's sleeves have an error a few rows back -- and, remarkably, I managed to duplicate the error in both sleeves. So I may tink that. Or I may try to finish the last pair of socks currently OTN -- the Hand Painted Yarn Co socks. I'm on the second sock, but not far into it, so finishing is probably not within reach.

Anyone else fighting massive allergy attacks right now? I can't hear or breathe. Thank you, Mother Nature. Allergy medicine seems to improve things only in that it knocks me out so that I'm no longer conscious of how miserable I am. I'm having a hard time focusing, and this may turn out to be a knitting weekend if only by default because any other activity feels beyond my reach.

Status Report: Sockotta Ribbed Socks

This is the problem with having too many projects on the needles and not enough knitting time. It takes forever to complete something, even something simple like socks. If I just knit a pair of socks, I can finish the pair in ten days to two weeks. But when I knit four pairs at once, plus three sweaters and a bag, well, I can go ten days without even touching a particular item.

And then it starts to feel as though I've been knitting the same thing forever.

This was brought home to me again on Friday. We were knitting at Nana's around the back table, and a woman came in who I've met once or twice before. She's nice. I like her a lot. Even though she said, "Oh, you're still knitting that?" when she saw my Catherine Parr.

Not her fault. Mine. All mine.

My September decision to not cast on anything new is starting to look like a decision of rare genius!

PS. Nope. Still haven't found the missing needles.

What Ever Happened to Monthly Goals?

How does this happen? You cross an item off your task list and say, "Woo hoo! We're almost done with April goals!" And then you look at the calendar and discover you're four days into June. ::sigh::

April and May were swallowed almost whole by work problems, foundation repairs, and the crib blanket. Okay. It happens. All you can do is move forward, right?

So here is my forward.

1. Knit the stranded, felted bag that's been languishing in a bag in the closet. It's pretty. It deserves to be finished. Plus, the selfish knitters on ravelry are doing a felted bag KAL. So that give me a good excuse to pull this one out and add some inches.


















2. Work on Fulmar's sleeves when time and attention permit. This one requires some concentration, and work has been sapping my focus lately, so I'll save the Fulmar sleeves for blocks of time that will allow me to concentrate on what I'm doing. Last night, for example, I took an hour off to watch tv and knit Fulmar, and the first thing I noticed was that I knit the wrong pattern row in the check rib filler stitch, so I had to rip and reknit that before I could go forward. I'd rather avoid doing that sort of thing in the first place!

So, when my brain is too fried to follow a stranded chart or to count the Fulmar rows properly, I'll work on

3. Socks. There's nothing in the world more suitable for my bouts of mindless knitting than a plain sock. Right now I have three socks OTN, one plain, one lace, and this one--













This is the first sockotta 2x2 ribbed sock knit on eenie-beenie needles that threaten to snap like twigs every time I k2tog. The ink has worn off these needles, but I'm pretty sure they're size 0.

I chose the 2x2 rib because sockotta is heavy on cotton, low on stretch. Ribbing compensates for that.






So that's it for June. I'm trying to keep it low key because work really is nutty right now. Nutty in a good way, but still nutty.

Behold The Power of My Will

Remember when I said I wasn't going to cast on any more socks this month? Yeah. I remember that, too. Except, when I made that statement, I forgot two tiny details. First, I always want a plain sock on my desk to pick at while I'm reading submissions. And second, when it comes to statements expressing an intent to avoid knitting, I am a liar. I may say I won't knit this or that, or I won't buy yarn, or I won't cast on new things. But saying it ain't doing it. We ought to all know that by now. Me especially. Except somehow I don't understand this about myself, which makes me question just how smart I really am.

So I cast on the Sockotta sock above, thinking it would make an awesome desk sock. Except I hadn't knit to the first color change before I realized the truth about this yarn. It's about half cotton, meaning it's stable, not too stretchy, and it's knitting into a fine and dense fabric on size 0 needles. This means, for comfort's sake, I ought to make the sock ribbed all the way down to give it some stretch. Not plain. So this cannot be my desk sock. (And it will probably take nine years to knit it, given the whole size 0 thing.) (You'd think I would have learned a lesson from the penelope socks, which secretly unknit themselves at night. Curse of the size 0s and all. Again, me = not so smart about some things.)

Can we all see where this is going yet?



























Yep, those would be my new desk socks. The yarn is Sisu, and I love the way it feels. I can't wait to wear them. All I want to do is knit! And knit and knit! That's how lovely this yarn is.

And just like that, I have three pairs of socks OTN again.