Still no pairs! My mostly sock knitting most of the time has been highly productive thus far. I am past the heel on the first sock for my mom. This is the first pair you’ll actually get to see completed, as I’d like to get them in the mail very shortly.

The yarn is Opal, not sure of the colorway. I like it, it sort of looks like water color, or painted brush strokes. Very cool stuff.

I love Opal yarn for socks, mostly because it’s just a really lovely hard wearing sock yarn. With Mom being far away, I am not around to attempt to repair socks, even if I wanted to. And I rarely want to. So, making sure her socks are out of hard wearing sock yarns is a way to be sure she gets to enjoy them for as long as possible.

In other exciting news, I got Mr. Ink to agree to fun heels and toes on his socks. This is great for two reasons. First, his feet are quite large, and I’ll need every extra inch of sock yarn I can get I suspect. Different color heels and toes are great yarn stretchers. Also, his color is as muted and sedate as can possibly be, so the different heel and toe colors will be a way to break up the monotony of a really boring knit.

At the beginning of January I took on a project to make socks. Socks in men’s size 13.5. I decided that I should use my favorite sock knitting book, Vintage Socks, and I chose the Gentleman’s half hose in ringwood pattern. I used Cascade Heritage Handpaints for this, and ran into a snag of running out of yarn completely halfway down the foot of the first pair. Apparently, for monster socks, you really do need that second skein.

The fact that they are large isn’t even the only reason I am calling them monster socks. After all, they ate two of my sock needles. I knit socks on two circs, and two of the circs, at different times, the needle pulled completely out from the cable. Quite annoying. Now, if I am logical about this, I will say that most of my sock needles were purchased around the same time, quite a few years ago now, and perhaps the glue that held them in place has just gone old. But it is more fun to blame the monster socks.

I’d had an abundance of sock needles from my crazy sock knitting days, so I haven’t bothered to replace the broken needles. Since I doubt I’ll ever knit socks in such a manic fashion again, it just doesn’t seem necessary.

I must say, they turned out quite lovely and manly and they were worth all the hard work I put into them. Most of all? I am thrilled they are finished. I’ve got a large desire to knit garments FOR MYSELF, and so any projects I can get off the needles now is fantastic.

I am not sure if I am referring to these socks as long in length or in amount of time it is taking me to knit them. To be honest, there is no deadline, so it doesn’t much matter. However, these are some LONG socks.

There’s nothing in particular that makes these on any time schedule. They’ll be done, someday. I have been working on them exclusively at work, with the exception of the time a needle broke and I brought them home to find a new needle. Which, also promptly broke, but I digress. Now they are back at work, they are seeing some of my time devoted to them, and it occurs to me that even with all that, it will be a LONG time before they are complete.

Many years ago, after making a few practice pairs of socks, I knit with my first nice sock yarn. One pair of easy ribbed socks out of koigu. I knit them toe up with an afterthought heel and contrasting toe color. Despite knitting another 80 some pairs of socks, they remained my favorite until I wore through the heels. I set them aside, and waited until MOS to knit a new heel.

Since today is yet another snow day, I decided to tackle one of the socks. Only one has a hole, so I may only fix the one initially. First, I cut off the end of the heel, and ripped back to the saved stitches I made originally when I knit the sock.

They were a bit difficult to pick up since the yarn is old and worn and thin now, but I did it anyhow since these socks deserve just as much wear time as possible. I miss them!

I chose STR for the new heel as I had just a bit in my stash. I actually didn’t have enough to make the heel as long as I’d have preferred, but it is long enough to wear the sock again.

And that is one of the quickest sock repairs ever. The afterthought heel made it easy and so I chose to do it. Otherwise? I’d have just thrown out the sock.

MOS updates on my projects tomorrow. With MOS ending Thursday, I’ll again have the freedom to choose whatever knitting I like, but I must admit I am driven to finish my MOS projects even so.

MOS updates coming your way. Even my own! Despite being quite sore, I am still managing a bit of knitting daily. I still have hopes to finish a pair of socks for my mom before the end of the month. Thankfully the sock yarn I am using is fairly thick, so progress is made even with less knitting overall.

Look at that! I’ve started a toe. Maybe I’ll even finish the first sock today. That would be awesome.

Kathy sent me a picture of a new pair she started. She didn’t mention if she finished her first pair, but I am guessing she did. She’s using Koigu, and as koigu is on the light side of yardage, she’s doing solid colored heels and toes. Toe up to maximize koigu yardage. Despite koigu being koigu, I bet she gets a good long sock out of these.

Despite having a crazed work schedule lately, and being rather quiet about MOS, even Sparkeespud is participating. These green socks seem rather appropriate for the month of March!

Tomorrow I will show you where I am with my Vintage socks. Despite having hit them hard at the beginning of MOS, they’ve been languishing. However, recently there’s been a bit of progress. I am willing to bet Sarah will have another finished pair to show off too.

No knitting for me, but the other MOS participants still are managing to get quite a bit done! Ummeyusuf finished her second pair of socks. She is worried about the sock colorway, but I must say I love it! What do you think?

Last evening we headed to Sarah’s house for dinner, where I see Sarah is still knitting up a storm as well. She finished a pair of socks she started last year during MOS. The orange colorway on these is scrumptious, I love them! Perfect yarn and pattern pairing.

After finishing the above socks, she got right back to work on her basic ribbed socks from our favorite sock book, Vintage Socks.  After I took this photo, she managed to rattle off another 4 or more stripes. She’s just flying through these as well.

As for me, it is all weaving all the time right now. This is less because I have an obsession with the loom and more because my hands won’t take the knitting still. So sad. That being said, I’ve got a second weaving project to show off tomorrow!

So, my friend Kathy read yesterday’s post about this not being a knitting blog and promptly sent me a picture of her MOS project. THANK GOODNESS! Because I really didn’t think a post was even going to go up today. I did no knitting except during my lunch hour at work, I wove and read a book in the evening, and despite this my hands are just aching fiercely today. But, Kathy’s been devoting quite a bit of time to her MOS socks, yarn is again BMFA and she’s awfully close to being done. I wonder if she’ll cast on another set of socks after this?

I am not sure that 17 leaves per sock is enough.

I am currently 10 ribbing rows away from adding all the crazy leaves to my Vintage Socks. I feel very accomplished to be this far. However, I am learning the real reason to my sock knitting aversion lately. My hands ache and I have a nasty case of tennis elbow from sock  knitting. These are things which have gotten worse in the last year or so, but taking time off from socks, and knitting in general, has really helped. Now that I am trying socks again, I am remembering the associated pain and realizing that it just isn’t worth it to me. I’ve knit a total of 81 pairs of socks in my knitting career and I do not think it overly important to continue unless I am doing so very slowly and in a pain free way. I may no longer be a “sock knitter.” Which feels like a very strange declarative statement as I’ve been a confirmed sock knitter since 2008. So, with great sadness, I am going to have to let the sock knitting go.  I will, of course, finish up these Vintage socks, and maybe have socks on the needles for my mom, knitting them in such a slow manner as to not hurt myself. The rest of my extensive sock stash will have to go toward shawls, scarves, weaving, and other wonderful things. And I may have to destash a few things.

I do, however, have the opportunity to show off a few socks from local gals that do not blog.

Sarah, who has already completed a pair of socks and a hitchhiker scarf completed her second pair of socks. These are the Wedge socks done in BMFA. Then she immediately cast on another sock and has already turned the heel.  I suspect that her MOS output this year will far exceed any other year she’s participated.

Kathy, after a moment of clarity in her sock knitting and then a massive frogging due to it, has now finished her first sock. Also BMFA, so it is not surprising she was blessed with all the flashing of colors on the leg. She’s still not sure how she feels about the fit on these, so she may end up adding to the toe. My experience is that socks stretch considerably, and I always regret not making mine slightly tight.

And now we get to see Mary’s sock toe. It is in her absolute favorite yarn, Noro Kureyon Sock. Since it is a discontinued yarn, just about the only place to find it is in Mary’s stash. Because she has purchased all of it. 🙂 She knit this sock toe in Las Vegas, so she totally gets the “Most well traveled sock” award for this MOS.

That’s it for MOS at the moment. Tomorrow? I get to show you my woven cowl. First ever weaving project that I am ridiculously proud of even though it isn’t particularly well done.

You know, I had no idea that I’d be just as excited about snow days as an adult as I was when I was a child. Now, I remember a time in 2009 when I was just over it, another snow day meant another day of back breaking shoveling onto piles of snow that were well over my head at that point. However, that has not been the experience since.

Today is a snow day. And it hasn’t even started snowing yet. Part of me wonders if the storm will be a bust and they were overly cautious, but I suppose since it is supposed to start at noon and make the drive home really ugly, perhaps they were wise. That being said, with 2 more storms right after this predicted, I would probably have preferred to get a day of work in.

That being said, I am not one to sleep in, but half the fun of this morning was lounging around in bed thinking of all the things I could get done today. The one thing I probably will not get done is knitting. I need a day off, my hands are sore. While in the past I may have pushed through that soreness, I have too many other little hobbies I could be messing with to do so. And really, I have so little to show you of the Vintage sock since yesterday. I did knit on it, but it felt like I had very little knitting time and I took some time out to do some reading, and consequently there just isn’t much to show for knitting wise.

However, I did snap a photo yesterday of a different sock. You see, with the upcoming snow storm I decided I would not be caught without my studded snow tires on my bike again. I don’t know if I’ll get a chance to use them, but I at least want to be prepared to do so. So Bug and I headed over to our favorite bike shop and had them put on. (And no, I can’t do it myself, studded tires are the one tire change I can’t do as the rims are far too stiff and I don’t have the strength for it.) While we were waiting, Bug worked on her homework, studied her math, and drank hot chocolate. I knit on the sock I have on the needles for mom and had a pellegrino. It was actually quite an enjoyable time.

Rather than sending socks for Christmas, this year mom got felted slippers. I feel certain they were appreciated, but I have also set aside two yarns for socks for mom. Now, I’ve been on a half a year sock knitting hiatus, but yesterday I cast on a new one. I’d been carrying around the yarn and needles for awhile in my purse, but hadn’t had a chance to cast on. I had been hoping for a much redder color from this yarn, but it seems to be quite….pink. Sorry Mom! Once again, mom gets some crazy colored socks. The pattern is the typical one that seems to fit mom’s feet well, Gentleman’s Plain Winter Socks from Vintage Socks. The next pair I am determined to make an actual pattern in.