I'm Happy *Now* !

I think one of the most dangerous phrases in the English language is "I'll be happy when (fill in the blank)." When the house is paid off, when the kids are out of the house, when this puppy is housebroken.

When these socks are done!

I try to catch myself when I say that and be happy now. Now, I say, now now now! I never know when life is going to slap me upside the head and put me in a situation where I will find myself longing for the days when I had a house to pay off, when the kids were still around, when the dog was a cute puppy.

That said, I'm happy that these socks are almost done! I've almost cast off the first one, and I should finish the second one today. Unlike Tatt3r, I don't get a pair of socks and a pair of wristers from the same ball of yarn, but this yarn was about 400 yards to the 100-gram ball, so I got generous-length cuffs on the pair of socks. If I had made ankle socks, maybe I could have gotten wristers, too!

I finished pattern 12 from Sampler M, and printed out pattern 13 today. Pattern 12 is what I would call "embossed knitting", where you add stitches and make a knit motif that stands out on a purl ground. The photo shows patterns 11 and 12.

Mary Thomas used a similar technique to create "bell frills" or ruffles on the edge of a garment. I think Nicky Epstein of Knitting on the Edge and Knitting Over the Edge uses it, too.

Pattern 13 is very similar to the "Candle-Light" pattern in Mary Thomas's Book of Knitting Patterns and also to the Candlelight pattern I used during Liz Lovick's Shetland Lace knitting workshop to knit my tussah-silk scarf, so I think this will be a fairly easy one for me to knit.