Once Upon a Sock, Belated February edition

Hi friends and happy Thursday!

Well, I have an embarrassing confession to make.  I thought today was the first Thursday of the month until about … two minutes ago.  Doh!  Last week was hectic, and I was traveling to a job interview (!) last Thursday and just completely never thought about it being the first of the month.  So, before I get into my post, sorry to fellow sock knitters Paula, Kat, and Stef!  Go check out the lovely posts they all wrote last week: Paula’s got a lovely vanilla sock finished (after winning a battle with kitchener stitch) and a second one under way at Spin a Yarn.  Stef is on the heels on her concurrently knit stripey socks at Wooly Cakes and Wooden Spoons.  And Kat’s got a lovely lacey sock off the needles over at Felinity Knits.

Ok, so with that shameful admission out of the way, let’s carry on and pretend it’s the first Thursday of the month! Because I’ve got some new socks to show you:

Yep, I’ve been busy since last month.

Ha, not likely! Just joking … these are some socks with a very long history, that I worked a few rows on on the train to said interview.  These were cast on … wait for it … just under ten years ago! The yarn’s the rather recently discontinued Sophie’s Toes Sock yarn, and I’ve always loved this color; the pattern is the Garter Rib Sock.

They were started for … an ex-boyfriend.  I made him the first sock, presented it to him (and showed him the in-progress second sock) … and then we broke up (I don’t think the two things were related, but you never can tell 😉 ) For months afterward, I thought I’d finish the socks and still hand them over — they were a gift, after all.  But time went on, and there was much more appealing knitting to be done … and they fell to the bottom of my UFO sack.  And, over the years, I’ve come across them and thought I should finish them and give them to someone … they were an awful lot of knitting, on size 0 needles, in beautiful yarn (For some reason, I never really considered ripping back and repurposing the yarn, which seems a rather obvious solution)

Anyway, I found the socks again recently and showed them to Mr. N — would he like them?  Would he mind that I’d knit 1.5 of them for someone else, a decade ago? He put the finished sock on his foot: no, he did not mind at all.  “This feels great on. I want these socks!”  And so, slowly, I’ve done a row here and there.  Let’s hope it doesn’t take me another ten years to finish them, ha!

Today was also an exciting mail day on the sock front — I was lucky enough to win a giveaway sponsored by Blacker Yarns and Clare Mountain for Clare’s Bronte Socks a few months ago.  I’ve been holding on to my Blacker gift certificate, waiting for the Mohair Blend sock yarn that’s used in the pattern to come back into stock. Last weekend, it did and I ordered a few balls (that lovely teal is going to wing its way to my mom — I think I might have to get the color for myself soon too!)

I toyed with the idea of casting on for the Bronte socks right away — it’d be eligible for the Edinburgh Yarn Festival Blacker Pod KAL, and I’m so curious to try out the yarn.  But, I’m having a bit of a sock finishing problem at the moment:

That’s a whole basket filled of socks in progress, and sock yarn I want to be knitting with right this moment.  Four WIPs in there, including the “now for Mr. N” socks and the Northern Yarn Zwartbles that I talked about earlier this week, which I can’t wait to cast on with. So I probably have no business casting on another sock.

Probably.

Well that about does it for me! If you’d like to join up in our monthly sock talk, we post on the first (ahem) Thursday of the month — feel free to jump in, just let one of us know!

I’ll leave you with this picture from a lovely ramble up to Clougha Pike yesterday — it’s been so grey today, it’s hard to believe it was this gorgeous yesterday!

xo K