Thursday, February 21, 2008

I'm all about the feet.





Anyone who knows me understands that happy feet = happy me. On my spa weekends with the gals, I’m first in line for the pedicure and the foot massage. When my husband wants some new obscure woodworking tool, he knows that a good foot rubbin’ will make me cave every time. (Dude, I STILL don’t get that saw thingy you showed me last night.) And I CANNOT have too many pairs of these shoes.


So, since my recent discovery that I could combine my foot obsession with my knitting obsession by knitting SOCKS, I’ve been over. the. moon. And I mean the planets-aligned-and-angels-singing kind of excitement. Given that I taught myself how to knit* and that I could not possibly squeeze a sock knitting class into my schedule, I decided to teach myself. I bought this fantastic book and put one foot in front of the other. (sorry, couldn’t resist)


After doing one of the mini-demo socks from the book (which my 4 year old wore around the house for 2 days), I knit a pair for DH. Because he loves wool and has stayed married to me for 18+ years, I felt he was highly qualified to be the recipient of my first pair of knitted socks.


The first one is bigger than the second one, but he swears he loves them.


Yarn: Koigu (KPPPM)
Colorway: Some number I can’t remember but I’ve named it "Impossible Blue" - The blue color in this yarn was so deep that it made my eyes twitch. love.
Needles: US 2 circulars
Pattern: CO 72 stitches and then just plain old stockinette following the general instructions in the book.

After a lot of gift knitting before the holidays, I decided in a daring and selfish move to knit MYSELF a pair. Unfortunately, a little bout of startitis resulted in a pair that don’t match.


Exhibit A:


Yarn: Cider Moon Glacier
Colorway: Forest Floor
Needles: US 3 circulars
Pattern: CO 56, plain sock

Exhibit B:


Yarn: Zen String Serendipity
Colorway: Mount Monadnock
Needles: US 2 circulars
Pattern: CO 72, plain sock


Have no fear. I am currently knitting the sole mate (ha! I crack myself up) for each of these. But that did not stop me from wearing them to work this week. I simply made up some excuse about needing to compare the feel of the yarn in each of the socks to inform my future sock yarn purchases (yeah, like I’m not all about the pretty colors). My co-workers pretended to buy it. But hey, they’ve seen me fishing my cell phone out of the gutter with yarn. How much more could I possibly confound them?

Anyway, I LOVE knitting socks. So you will be hearing a lot about socks in the near future as I embark on a mission to knit a pair of socks for every member of my family. There are enough of them to keep me busy for most of this year. So if you do not share my DNA or are not married to someone who does, you may have to wait a bit.



Next time: "Why Sock Yarn Should be in Your Hurricane Preparedness Kit"



Clearly I’m ready for the next season:


Sock on !!!

*I do wish to acknowledge the unflappable patience of Amos the blog stalker who, during my initial knitting experience, fixed several dropped stitches for me on a train as I cursed and gnashed my teeth. And she still talks to me after that. What a chum.