I May Be Crazy

This is a day's worth of knitting for Sock Madness.

You'll notice that the socks don't match. That's where the crazy part comes in.


I woke up yesterday morning, checked my e-mail, and went padding around the house taking balls of yarn to the kitchen scale to determine if I had enough of what I wanted to use. This is not my normal morning routine, which usually involves activities like walking dogs and eating breakfast, but everything's different on a Sock Madness day.

After choosing yarn, having breakfast, and feeding/walking dogs (who will only put up with being ignored for so long), I sat down to knit. By lunchtime, I'd come up with this.

The problem was that I wasn't really happy with this. I'd stepped down from Size 1.5 to Size 0 needles without swatching, just assuming that a 72-stitch sock would be insanely big - instead I was getting a kind of snug sock. And while the two colors of Louet Gems were the two I had that looked best together, they really didn't offer sufficient contrast to show off the pattern. I'd been consulting Ravelry on my breaks, looking at the nice socks people were turning out, and noticed that the designer was making hers in Baby Ull.


That's when I remembered the Yarn Suitcase. There was a time, not so long ago, when I kept my yarn in an old suitcase. That was also a time when almost all of my sock yarn was either Dale Falk or Baby Ull. Some things have changed, but I still have the yarn suitcase, and a good supply of Baby Ull.

So I switched. Frogged a whole morning's work, and got to here by midafternoon. Posted on Ravelry to announce what I'd done, and found out I wasn't the only one. I really don't think I'm going to win Sock Madness, so the reward will be getting a whole bunch of new pairs of socks. And now I'm getting socks I like - socks I really like. The pattern is based on Maori baskets, and I think the highly contrasting colors do a much better job of showing it off. So the Gems skeins are resting - and so am I. I was sore when I woke up this morning, and will probably be sore again tonight. But by tonight, I should be halfway through a new pair of socks - no pain, no gain!