My mystery socks are coming along nicely. I really like this pattern, as I think I’ve said before. The odd things, though, is that I am somehow now more comfortable reading the pattern as words, and the chart form is confusing to me. I don’t know why. It’s not in weird notation, and I’ve been reading charts for years now. What is up with me lately? As is my wont, I have made some errors that I find inexplicable. I’m paying a ton of attention, I get the right stitch count every round, I haven’t unknowingly dropped any stitches, and still there are a couple of glaring imperfections. Actually, they’re just glaring to me because I know they’re there, but a lot of people have seen these babies, and they’ve all been in raptures about them.

I’m doing this pair two at a time, as I have been lately. I had to remove one pair from the circular needle when I dropped the stitches for half a sock and had to go back a few rounds, and it was nice to briefly have a pair of dpns. I considered doing one using the magic loop and leaving the other pair on the dpns. I do know people who will do a pair of socks at the same time, but not on the same needle, but I don’t want to try that method now. I’ll see how this pair comes out, and if there are appreciable differences, then I’ll consider it.

I’m now on twitter! Random, I know. Anyway, I’ve starting talking to other knitters there. I’ve given one encouragement about switching to continental knitting from English style. I’m really liking the way this has turned out for me, even though I sometimes still use English if I know I’m not paying a lot of attention or am tired and want the comfort of familiarity. I hope that, in time, I will go back to English style less and less until I don’t do it at all.

Okay, you may have noticed that I have a new site theme now. I just couldn’t take looking at the other one anymore. I’m not sure how long this will last, but I like it for now.

In knitting news, I am making great progress with the mystery socks and I love them! The yarn is so prettyful, and I love the way this is turning out. Although it pains me and I could go on about this forever, I shall say no more!

I think that I have finally found a sock to make. It fits my admittedly random requirements:

• It’s not popular, meaning it’s not in hundreds or thousands of queues or project lists on Ravelry
• It’s interesting looking
• It seems scalable
• People who’ve made it seemed to have really enjoyed the pattern

Once I  had to change my yarn for this project, I decided to look around at other patterns, and did indeed find one that I think I like more. So now I have a new pattern, and it took me all of seven minutes to wind my skeins into balls, so I know I have yarn of normal strength. I’m enjoying Julia Spencer-Fleming’s Clare Fergusson/Russ Van Alstyne series too much to knit a lot lately, but I’m on book five of six, so I should get back to knitting soon.

I was going to make my exchange socks out of Nature’s Palette Fingering yarn, but the two skeins broke approximately 100 times while I was trying to wind them. I now have two quart bags of microballs, and one sandwich bag of all the rest of the string that was too short to even wind. Bummer. I’m glad that I’m seeing this now, but I still find the whole thing so disappointing. I have other yarn that I could use, but I had this picture in my head of how I wanted my socks to look and now I think that this probably will not be how they end up.

The only thing that makes me feel a little better is that this yarn is not the yarn that I was excited about last week. I decided that that yarn would be better used in another project, but that this would be perfect. Stoopid me!

I’ve figured out which socks to make for my secret exchange person, and I bought this gorgeous yarn for it, but before I start, I want to knock out one other pair of socks using 1) the continental method and 2) the magic loop. I’m making nopurl monkeys. I’ve made the regular pattern before and found it a breeze, so if I have trouble with this easier version, I’ll know that it was my methods, not the pattern that defeated me. It took me a week to do two socks separately, so I think I should be able to finish the two in a similar time frame. The socks that I want to knit for the exchange are more complicated, but I feel like I should have a better idea of my skill level after finishing these socks (or not, as the case may be).