I don't hate making socks!

Once upon a time I made a sock. I was bored with the whole project, even during a two-day conference, and it took me a good eight months to make the second one. I convinced myself that I hate making socks. I didn't really enjoy wearing socks either, but that was fine because I lived in Georgia and wore heels just about every day anyway. And then I moved to Vermont, and accidentally made friends with every damn sock knitter in town. After almost a year of watching them make socks (and, also, of needing and wearing lots of socks), I decided to give the sock-knitting another try.

Turns out, I don't hate making socks after all! Here are the things that made me not hate knitting socks:

• I'm doing two at a time.
• I'm doing them on one needle (I just taught myself Magic Loop! ...from 2-At-A-Time Socks, thank you Treehugger for lending)
• I'm doing them toe-up.
• I learned the Judy Becker Magic Cast-On (because a provisional cast-on for a sock is stupid...a major point of doing it toe up is so you DON'T have to graft the toe together later!)(thank you, Cat Bordhi, for your excellent how-to video).

I knit about two inches per sock last night, and fell asleep thinking about stitch patterns I might use, and how to do them so they look pretty... I've totally converted, haven't I? Sometime I'll get around to posting pictures, but that involves taking pictures, which involves putting down the knitting needles. And I'm reluctant to do that right now.

Finished Objects

A few photos of finished objects... I have done quite a bit of knitting work lately, but have been remiss in posting here. It's been one heck of a month, hitting four major milestones in the span of eight days, a sudden trip home for a semi-surreal family funeral (not someone to whom I was close, I'm fine thank you, blah blah blah), and now I'm spending two blissful weeks doing as little actual work as possible, because I will not have this opportunity to recharge myself until after Christmas. And no, there will be no Christmas knitting this year, if I can help it.

This is my finished Dashing (for Ben). My sister took the photo -- since she's a magazine editor, she's especially good at setting up shots, even with my crappy cell phone camera. They turned out really well, and I'd knit this pattern again in a heartbeat, although probably with different yarn. Something a little softer/less scratchy than Jamieson's Shetland Spindrift. Mmmm, maybe a nice Blue Sky Alpaca and Silk???





Here's the finished Red Teddy Bear, for my sister's baby (who has been born! It's a boy! Photos to come later).

Sister loves the bear -- or, at least, she says she does -- and I'm hoping that Baby A. does too, eventually.


Doc the Cat wasn't so sure about the bear once I stitched on a face. He'd rather have the thing be a little less anthropomorphic, I guess. The face kind of freaked him out.

Poor kitty.



Currently on the needles: the Tangled Yoke Cardigan, and a yellow (slightly modified) version of the Red Teddy Bear, and a pair of thrummed baby mittens that I invented and did without writing down, so now I can't get the second one to match the first. Ah, experimenting.