Halfway there, or "I do still knit"

Just not that much. It's been kind of busy, and I've been away from home, so my craftiness has been on the back burner for awhile. Plus, my husband is not here and there is no TV here. Since I do most of my knitting a) on weekends while hub makes breakfast or b) in front of the tube, I have not been knitting as much.

Somehow (I think a couple or a dozen airplanes where involved) I did manage to make it halfway through my sock-knitting plans for the year. I never posted my goals for this year, but one of them included making and/or completing 6 pairs of socks. 1 pair for each of my loyal sock wearers (my sister, my mother, my husband and my husband's uncle), and 2 pairs for me. I've decided to be a little more selfish in my knitting. I enjoy it more and life is too short to not enjoy what you choose to do. Anyways, back to that first goal, the 12 socks. I am happy to announce that 6 are complete:

First up we have the nutkin socks, that I made from artyarns ultramerino4 color 111, purchased from pickup sticks. These are a bit behind on their blog reporting, as I finished them before I left on this trip, somewhere in the neighborhood of Feb 20th or so. Originally, I intended to keep these for myself, but working on them while hanging out with my sister negated all those thoughts immediately. She fell in love with the colors, they're really her colors anyways, and since she has worn the pair of jaywalkers I knit her in 06, just about every time I've seen her since then (even brought them to the hospital to have her baby) she got bumped to the top of the list. This pattern was fun to knit, it does bias a little as some on Rav have mentioned, but it doesn't seem to bother sis as they were on her feet the last time I saw her. She also hinted that she doesn't own enough hand-knitted socks, but I don't think I can increase my output rate to more than one pair per sock wearer a year.

Next, we have some bordello sea socks made from Fleece Artist Sea Wool, purchased from the same sale at pickup sticks. The color is woodland. This was my first time working with this fiber, and I like it, I like it a lot. I started these in January, finished the first the first week of February and left them at home for most of my trip. I picked them back up when I was home three weeks ago, and finished them on the plane back last week. I wore them twice while I was home, and I'm pretty happy with them. You may notice some ladders. I don't know how they got there. This is the first time I have ever experienced ladders when knitting in the round. At first I thought it was the plastic pony pearl needles I was using, as I am a die hard bamboo gal, but couldn't find bamboos in the right size. But, I saw some other folks on ravelry have ladders too, so I think it may be a side effect of the increases and decreases happening on the ends of the needles.

Finally, we have some so square socks from knitspot. These are for Hub's uncle, who holds the dubious distinction of being the only person who had ever requested knitting from me and had that request granted happily. If you ever met unc's you'd understand why I broke my not knitting on demand rule for him. He's not the kind of guy to ask for much, and the socks that I knit him for Xmas 05 are the only gift we have given him that he has ever made use of. When I say ever, I mean he has gifts still in the boxes circa the mid-eighties. So when he said the socks were wearing a little thin, I went yarn shopping. I finished them just in time for his birthday, which is today. I dropped them by the post office this morning and they will happily arrive in time for his birthday dinner this weekend. These socks also hold the distinction of seeing more places than anything else I've knit. These socks have been knit in 7 different states. Yup, 7. The knitspot pattern was good, but I did have to make a few alterations to make it work right for the 70 stitch size, which I will list in my ravelery notebook for those interested in the details.