Spring Socks

Yesterday's SW Michigan weather forecast claimed it would be "Mostly sunny" and it looked about like this all day yesterday.

Today's forecast claims it is "mostly cloudy," so today, of course, we are getting a bit of sun. I even found a sweet violet in bloom today!

If you are looking for the Susan Bates needle review, you can find it here.

Nothing I had on needles was calling to me. I went moping through my heap of projects, read email, leafed through pattern books, and not a peep.

Then, suddenly, a skein of vulgar acrylic yarn wrestled me down and demanded to be made into this year's version of last year's "Cotton Candy" socks.

By bedtime last night I had cast on and turned one sock toe, and cast on for the second toe.

I don't have a sock pattern. Through dint of rigorous swatching, I know that 64 stitches will make a sock in baby yarn that will fit me, so I cast on 32 stitches using the "invisible" cast on and a piece of red string and knitted a short-row toe.

The helpful little finger in the picture belongs to our son. On the bottom right you can see half of the stitches picked up off the red string, and half waiting for another needle.

I used to be able to knit short-row toes that didn't look sharply angular, then suddenly I couldn't do it any more. Finally, I drew circles on knitting graph paper and figured out that if I moved the wrapped stitch over by two stitches instead of one, I could get a rounded toe again.

Since I think of these socks as "16 st per needle", I wrapped stitches 16, 15, 14, 13, 12, 10 and 8, and finally! a nice rounded sock toe again.

Once I have two toes, I knit them until they are "long enough", then I turn the heel and knit the cuffs/ribbing until it is long enough. I always seem to be around when I am knitting socks for myself, so I can usually get myself to try them on for fit. (Sometimes I have to bribe myself with chocolate.)

I guess my knitting mojo was off hiding from winter. It certainly came leaping and pouncing out once I started on spring knitting!