FO: Christmas 2020 Socks

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and (soon to be) New Year!

This year has brought many changes and trials that we have had to overcome. It's been a much slower knitting year for me due to spinal and joint alignment issues that I have been struggling with since March, but after many weeks of chiropractic and physical therapy visits, I am starting to feel stronger and able to heal more. I am hoping that the new year will bring my body back to normal.

Nevertheless, I have finished my Christmas socks in time for the holiday, and so let me share the finished knit with you:

Ironically they matched some my surroundings, such as my knitting basket, a rug at a play-place my kids were at at the end of 2019, knitting bags and such. I have been working on these socks casually for over a year, and that's okay. Life is too short to care about missing the boat.

You can find the project notes here.

These were knit two-at-a-time, which is nice for trying to get the socks to match up identically, but I find finicky in terms of yarn tingling management. I still go back and forth in my mind to decide whether or not to do future socks as singletons.

 

These socks took me a year, but I'm okay with that. Time slipped away from me this week and I intended to cast on next year's Christmas socks before the holiday, but I'll do that now that the crazy Christ-massing is done. 

Here's some photos that capture our merry-making this Christmas:

Spiced sugar cookies, kolaczkies (not shown) and really scrumptious peppermint macrons with fresh Italian (peppermint) buttercream.

 

One twin still wears Halloween and Thanksgiving wear, and the other twin is ALL about Christmas! Can you believe that they are 10 years old now?

 

No, we do not know how to make the appropriate amount of appetizer food for a small amount of people! 

Don't loose your humor and silliness people.

 

I know that the weather has turned cold, but don't forget to some fresh air and sunshine throughout the week to nurture your physical and mental health... and vitamin D3 supplements! 

I wish you good health and much happiness from this year into the next!

WIP: "Hermione's Everyday Socks" in Noro Sock Yarn

I have finally decided to use my ball of Noro Kureyon Sock Yarn that I bought in college. You might be seeing a theme here: start using yarn bought over a decade ago. It's a noble cause. However, you get to the point were it's nestalgic, and then you don't feel like you can use the yarn unless you have found the absolute perfect project for it.

I divided the 100g ball into two seperate balls. I am making no attempt to line up the colors as I knit the socks toe-up. This will be my first pair of mis-matched socks, and I can't think of a better way to do this than rustic yarn that looks handspun.

Project: Hermione's Everyday Socks

Yarn: Noro Kureyon Socks (single-ply yarn), colorway 185 S

Needles: US 1.5 (2.25mm) and US 1 (2mm)

Started: sometime in 2018 (started for car-knitting, and then hibernated)

Although there's some purple in it, this colorway is really out of my regular colorway preference, so I hope the colors work up nicely.

This pair of sock lives inside my lovely Sailor Moon project bag from Otterly Adorable Knits and my bamboo yarn bowl from Darn Good Yarns. Don't you love how the colorway matches the colors in the bag? It's the little things in life. I got this bag almost a couple of years ago during a slump in my life. Sailor Moon was my favorite anime show back in middle school, so this is me channeling my inner child for a few smiles.

There's so many shades of purple in this sock colorway. In the wrong lighting, it almost looks like one giant purple chunk. The green/yellow really looks much nicer in person though.

I was planning on working another shortrow heel, but since there's already large sections of one color, I plan on doing an afterthought heel with a contrasting color from the leftover yarn.

In the midwest (Illinois), everything is shut down right now. We have having historic extreme temperature with -30's-40's+ for the wind-chill. They are telling us that if you stay out longer than 5 minutes, you might actually loose a limb to frostbite, or get hypothermia. Yikes. We are actually have colder weather than Antartica at the moment. Hopefully it blows over in 24 hours and our furnace and water pipes come through this unscathed.

Stay warm! Times like these really make you grateful for the basic necessities that you have--warmth, shelter, food and er, knitting.