- I’m going to Stitches West in February, and taking a Norwegian knitting class. Can someone tell me the difference between Norwegian knitting and Fair Isle knitting? Anyone? Even Google hasn’t been able to give me a good answer. Perhaps I will have to wait until February to find out.

- I started the sleeves (ok, one sleeve) for Salina. The front and back have been done since earlier this year (March?), and I really want to finish the sweater so I can wear it.

- The unfortunate truth is that Salina probably won’t be finished before the end of the year. Work is really busy right now, which leaves precious little time for things like sleeping and eating, much less knitting or blogging.

- Grumperina posted pictures from Victorian Lace Today, which looks like a fabulous book. So much lace, so little time! Anyway, Christmas is coming, and I know that Santa reads my blog. So, Santa? I’d love this book for Christmas!

First of all - thanks for all the comments on the socks. It blows me away how beauty really is in the eye of the beholder when it comes to hand knits. Personally, the socks aren’t my thing… but apparently some of you think they’re perfectly OK - perhaps even pretty. So, here’s the deal - I’m going to finish knitting the second sock, and give the pair away to someone who actually wants them. The only caveat is that you have to have feet that are similar in size to mine. I’d guess that these will fit feet that are between a size 7 & 9 (US women’s shoe sizes)… my feet are a size 8.5, but with the stretch of the ribbing, they can easily go up or down in size a bit without affecting the fit too much.

So, leave a comment and let me know if you want the pair when I’ve completed it.  On Wednesday, 11/15, I’ll pick someone at random to be the recipient of the socks.  Be forewarned, I’ll probably be sending them out after the first of the year because I still need to finish the second sock.

Now, if you’ll excuse me - I need to go soak my tired, aching muscles in a warm bath. I spent two and a half hours today on a jog/walk with a friend who is nearing the peak of her marathon training. She ran the whole time, and I lagged behind, meeting up with her on the way back. I probably did 10 or 11 miles (60%+ walking), to her 15. I’m fairly impressed that I was able to do as well as I did, given my general lack of fitness right now.  There’s something about doing a long run/walk along the ocean that makes the miles go by a lot faster than when you’re exercising in the ‘burbs!

I’ve been enamored with the pomatomus socks since the first day I saw the pattern. The definition of the twisted stitches. The subtle curves formed by increasing and decreasing. The way the ribbing flows into the pattern at the top of the leg and at the heel. Love it. Love all of it. I knew I had to knit a pair of these socks, and soon. And, I wanted to knit them with yarn I already had.

Therein lies the problem. All of my sock weight yarn is either variegated or self-striping. Self-striping would just be bad for this pattern, so I tried to pick the most subtly variegated yarn I could find in my pile-o-yarn.

Turns out, not so subtle after all.

This is a skein of Cherry Tree Hill sock yarn that I picked up on sale a while back. The yarn itself is great… love the texture and “sproingy-ness.” But the color. Oh, the color. Look how the colors distract from the lovely pattern. The pattern is completely obfuscated by the horribly pooling colors of the yarn. Sigh. Even if I knit this yarn into plain old stockinette socks, I’m pretty sure I would still hate the colors and pooling.

I’ll probably knit the second sock at some point. For now, this is my train wreck sock. The one I knew was going horribly wrong just a few rows into it, but couldn’t stop because I just had to see what happened.

Lesson learned - no more purchasing variegated yarn for me! From now on, for patterned socks, I’ll be using solid colored sock yarn only, or perhaps a very subtly shaded yarn. No more variegated. None.

After seeing these in Knitty, I knew I’d have to make a pair. A girl needs something to keep her hands warm when the office is 55 degrees!

I wasn’t sure I’d have enough yarn using one ball of Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran. Turns out it was very, very close! When the pattern says you’ll need to use the gauge swatch in order to finish with one ball, it’s not kidding. I had about a yard of yarn left over total, all in pieces 4-6″ long left over from weaving in my ends. (i must confess, i didn’t even make a gauge swatch for this project!)

Project notes:

Pattern - Fetching from Knitty

Yarn - 1 ball Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran in gray

Needles - Size 6 dpns

Modifications - I didn’t do the picot cast off from the pattern. In various pictures I saw, I thought it made the finished edge look messy. I used a plain old cast off, in pattern.

Thoughts - A quick, easy project. I finished these in under four hours total, over two nights of watching movies.