Finished: Child's First Sock

Pattern: Child's First Sock in Shell Pattern from Knitting Vintage Socks by Nancy Bush
Yarn: Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock (80% superwash wool, 20% nylon), colorway 25ns/mint, two skeins (with plenty of leftovers for a pair or two of baby socks!)
Needles: Two 12" US 1 Addi Turbo circs
Started/Completed: February 18/February 24
Mods: picked up an extra couple of stitches for the gussets, thus completing a couple extra gusset decreases (my usual mod)

Here's a detail shot of the beautiful stitch pattern. Obviously yarning over the right way was the key to making this pattern work. These fit perfectly and the color is so cheerful (in real life, much brighter than it appears here). And if you're counting, this is my fourth pair of socks finished this month.

This pair will come in handy, since I opened my sock drawer on Friday morning only to discover a terrible tragedy -- my favorite socks had become a casualty of war(drobe):

The sock on the left has a weak spot (up near the top), while the right sock has a full-blown hole. I'm going to try to darn these with the little bit of yarn I have left, but they are wearing out quickly. I have another skein of this yarn (cotton/lycra blend from Greenwood Fiberworks), so I suppose those will be my next pair of socks.

I did a great deal of knitting this weekend. In addition to finishing up the socks (completing the entire foot of the second sock alone yesterday), I made good progress on J's Cambridge Jacket. I took a vacation day on Friday, and since J was in town but at work most of the day, I caught up on my knitting podcasts and knit away, finishing up the right front and starting the first sleeve. The sleeves are all stockinette, so they should be pretty fast.

After finishing up the second sock for myself last night, of course I immediately had to cast on for a new one. I've done the last couple pairs I knit for myself, so I thought the next pair should be for J. To change things up, I decided to go with the toe-up Widdershins pattern from the summer '06 Knitty. As these are for J -- who you know is rather boring/unexciting in his taste in sock patterns -- I'm doing the plain version. However, I was worried that the pattern as written would be too small, so I did some calculations to make the sock larger by eight stitches.

This yarn is Austermann Step, which contains aloe and jojoba oil. It's a tad bit slick on metal needles, but it's nice and smooth and actually seems to be softening my dry fingertips as I knit. J is also really liking the subtle striping effect (shades of gray -- are you surprised?). These were cast on at about 10 p.m. last night and you can see how quickly they knit up. The toe up gusset/heel flap formula is intriguing, although I'm not sure I like it as well as cuff-down construction. This will see some action tonight during the Oscars!