First thing in the morning, I picked up a sock yarn and grabbed some of those empty sock needles. No I did not start with any of my pretty new yarns. I decided that in honor of me having more than one lovely Opal yarn to choose from, to start with the oldest one, which I have had for a couple of years. I'm pretty sure I got it from Jo's too, when I was living just down the road from her store.
At the time, I was enamoured with the Geek Socks. It works best if you have at least three rows of the same colour to show off the sweet little ripples formed by the slip stitches.
And that is exactly what this lovely sock yarn is going to be, Geek Socks. I had only the first slip stitch section complete this morning so I stopped before blogging, to knit just a few rows past the next colour change to show off the sweet patterning. Honestly, it was falling in love with the sweet little thing all over again. I adore watching that gentle ripple appear.
I also felt very happy that I had more than one pair of socks on the needles! That picture the other day of all those empty sock needles haunted me.
I did wonder if socks were what my hands would feel like knitting all day but after my few chores were done, I had the nagging feeling that there was something else that needed doing. I dug through the WIP basket and there it was.
On my trip last year, one of my take long projects was Catboat from Amy Herzog's amazing Custom Fit website. She has a process where you can custom size any of her sweaters to your own unique measurements. I so want to be able to knit a sleeve or a sweater front when I am out and about without having to drag along these huge darn bags of sweater. I really want to free myself from my worry about knitting sweaters in pieces and finding it doesn't fit after all. I can do it top down easily and the only thing stopping me from feeling comfortable bottom up is brain block. My head wasn't in the right place last summer. Just too much on my mind as I drove, but this year, I am determined to settle down and do one. Or two. OR THREE!
I still want a turtleneck but I am not quite feeling I want to challenge myself with this yarn right now. I have a limited number of balls of this and when I start over with the challenge of knitting to a pattern in pieces from the bottom up again, I want to do it with a yarn I have lots of.
This yarn is what my hands wanted to knit, though. This was my answer yesterday's naked and bereft feelings.
Started from the top down, with a narrow saddle shoulder growing naturally from the collar, this sweater is complete to just below the arm join. I do mean just. I had to push a bit to get the underarm stitches to more than just the cast on. But I really do love this yarn. In a perfectly just world, I would have more, but shipping and cost of the yarn itself and my very large and lovely, treasured stash mean it won't happen anytime soon. But knitting this surely does fall into the category of knitting the good stuff.
The only trouble with it all was that by suppertime, my hands were done. I had planned to listen to another book for NaJuReMoNoMo, but without knitting? How? I did think about actual reading of a book, but my eyes were tired too. I did a little work on putting Christmas away and then sat down to watch a new Father Brown on Netflix and...
picked up another ball of yarn and a set of needles. I wondered if maybe I could squeeeeeek out a toe on socks for my mom. A toe is really very little knitting, right?
I did little more than just a toe, but that is a story for another day.
It was an entire day of beginnings and the sheer joy of letting my fingers wander as they would. How lovely a thing it is to do just that.
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