socktoberfest!

Yeah, I know, we’re already 5 days into Socktoberfest. But this is the first chance I’ve had to pull myself out of the pile o’ work, and show off my pile ‘o happy, bright socks. Before I start rambling about my plans for this month, how about a little retrospective?

Here all all 7 pairs of socks I’ve knit for me (I also knit a pair for my husband, but couldn’t find them for the photo) since I started knitting socks 1.5 years ago. Yes, not as impressive a number as some, but I couldn’t be happier with them. I’m so glad I decided to go for it with the Jaywalkers (far right, in the above photo), even though at the time, I found the idea of turning a heel to be incomprehensible! After that first taste of sock-knitting, I needed more, and I got a little more practice with basic sock construction using the Yarn Harlot’s basic sock recipe to make the socks that appear, in close-up form, in my blog header. Those socks absorbed all of the massive stress that I was under while trying to take my Masters exams after having had an unrecoverable harddrive crash (on my birthday, no less) just a few weeks prior. Next were the Candy Corn socks, knit during last year’s Socktoberfest! They were my first socks that I knit without referring to a pattern at all, having gotten very comfortable with basic sock construction knitting the blog-header socks. Next were the Lemongrass socks, which just didn’t want to be the Pomatomus socks that I tried to make them at first! After that, there were the RPMs, knit with the absolutely gorgeous Koigu yarn sent to me by Jen. I have plans to knit another pair of these, for a friend who fell in love with them while I was making them. Next came the serendipitous pairing of patterns known as “Giotto-With-The-Flow”, also known as “the prettiest, girliest socks I have ever knit”. With these, I learned to make a picot-edge, and to put holes in my socks on purpose! And finally, (I just realized I put them out of order in my photo!), there are the Waiting Room Socks, which y’all watched grow while I brought them with me to various doctors appointments all summer.

So, what am I planning on doing for Socktoberfest, this year? For one, I’d like to make some more progress on some of my current socks-in-progress:

The Norwegian Stockings, you might notice, haven’t gotten much attention since the last time I posted about them. I love the pattern, I love the yarn…but stranded colorwork socks are just not very portable, and thus they rarely get worked on, since I tend to think of my larger non-portable projects when I’m knitting at home. My current “purse socks”, the Picot Pebbles, got some more attention at a doctor’s appointment last week and are almost ready for me to start their heel flap. At the top are something I cast on for this morning, the Tabi socks from Veronik Avery’s new book, in a very autumn-appropriate color (now, if only the weather would get more autumn-appropriate! 83 degrees in Upstate NY on October 5th? Craziness!), which I will most definitely be finishing before the end of the month. And finally, there’s the Golden Dragon sock. This poor sock got buried at the bottom of a bag when we moved. Digging out just now to take its picture, I was reminded of just how gorgeous the yarn/pattern combo was here, and I have high hopes of making more progress on these during Socktoberfest.

What else might tempt me? Well, I’ll save that for another post…and will try to resist the temptation in the meantime!