1,000

Blogger tells me that this is my 1,000th post. Kind of crazy, but I guess it's also not that surprising given that I've had this blog for more than eight years now. When I started it, I never realized how much I could talk about yarn, knitting, fiber, and spinning!

In any case, like much of the country, we're in the middle of the extreme cold, so right now all I want to do is cover myself in wool. It's fitting that I'm working on socks, because my feet are usually the one part of me I have trouble keeping warm during the winter. I've been continuing to find weak spots in more of my socks, all in the same spot, and I've come to the conclusion that it's the fault of a big callous I have on my left foot. I'm not sure why one foot is worse than the other, but I have a persistent rough spot right on the ball of that foot. I am trying to be more diligent about exfoliating it in the shower every day, but I also thought I'd try a bit of an experiment with this pair of socks. In the area of the sock that will cover this callous, I'm doing a slip stitch pattern on the sole stitches for added reinforcement. It's much like the stitch you'd use for the heel flap except that I'm alternating which stitches are slipped each round -- in other words, I do (slip one, knit one) across for one round and (knit one, slip one) across for the other (with plain rounds in between). The result is a kind of Eye of Partridge section, which looks quite pretty and, I'm hoping, will wear longer.

It's not quite this bright in real life/good light, but it's close.

My other project currently on the needles is a hat for Halos of Hope. A number of the podcasts I listen to are participating in the so-called Podcaster Throwdown, so I thought I'd knit a couple of hats to throw on the pile. The first was actually cast on in the car on the way to D.C. on Christmas Eve, though it stayed at home when we went to Florida and didn't get any more attention until Sunday night. I figure I'm now about halfway done.

The pattern is Wurm, and the yarn I'm using is some Knit Picks Comfy Sport that was leftover from a sweater I knit for Rainbow before she was born. I didn't have enough of one or two colors to do the whole hat, but there's enough scraps that I can combine them all, so this Wurm will be multicolored. Once this hat is done, I'm going to use some Wool-Ease that I found on clearance at Michaels a while back to knit an Amberson. My hope is to get both hats done this week so I can send them off on Saturday.