Favorite Knit and Lacy KAL

I'm a bit late on this one, but it took me a while to decide what my favorite knitted finished object was. Then I read a post about favorite socks, and as I pulled these out of the drawer, I knew I had my favorites.

These socks are about three or four years old. I knitted them out of Plymouth Encore Colorspun 7991, a nice wool-blend yarn where the color of each ply gradually changes, so slowly the colors change without really striping.

This was the second pair of socks I ever knitted, and it was my second try at knitting this yarn into socks.

The first try looked like this. I had knitted my very first pair of socks on this same frame, and they fit quite well. But for some reason, using this yarn on the exact same frame gave me a sock that was too tight!

I got to this point and started to get uneasy. When I found they just wouldn't go over my heel, I almost cried. I ended up frogging them and letting the yarn sit for almost a year.

When I did cast on again, I did these socks about as completely opposite to the first try as it was possible to be:

I cast them both on at once.

I knit them as flattened tubes, each on a straight needle.

I knit them inside (purl side) out, including the ribbing.

I knit them toe-up.

And this time they fit beautifully.

After at least three years of wear and machine washing, they are fuzzing up a little, but they feel a lot softer than the percentage of wool might lead you to think. Both my feet and hands still find them soft and silky.

Bells is leading a Knit-Along called "A Long Lacy Summer" (Southern hemisphere summer), and this is what I've knitted so far.

This is a black and white photo of the Christine Duchrow doily center I started the other day. So far I have discovered that knitting is very educational, and that "Aus 2 mal umschlagen stets nur eine Masche strickend, bis Tour 33" means something like "Knit only once into each double yarnover through Round 33".

Guess what? If you follow the directions in a language you don't read, you really do get 20 yarnover holes at round 10 instead of 30.

The plan is along the lines of my usual "Make up the plan as you go along." I have three skeins of quite old Robert Kidd Persian wool, at 165 yards each, in a pale Dijon mustard color. I've dyed one with Easter egg dye, and another with food coloring, and the last one is sitting there taunting me with its pale mustard-ness.

I am tentatively thinking about knitting the circle out to about the width I want (technically, that would be "Oh, about yea big"), then knitting short-row points to square it off, and finally knitting flat at each end of the square to make it rectangular.

Because me, I am all about this planning in advance stuff.