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.

I finally opened the ball winder and yarn swift that I bought in December, and wound a hank of pretty blue cotton that I got in the yarn swap. That went well, and I now have a lovely center-pull ball to show for it.

I then tried to wind one of my many skeins of ArtYarns Supermerino, and that did not go so well. The bottom of the ball kept falling off, so I tried to rewind the skein, and now it’s hopelessly tangled. While suffering, though, I did have the presence of mind to separate the skein into two sections, so that if I use it to make booties, I can do them in the two-at-a-time method, which I am now officially rocking at.