A Study in Contrasts

I had such great plans for my vacation knitting. I figured I'd get through a ton of Rainbow's Dancing Leaves Cardigan, to the point where I actually wound all the yarn before we left so I wouldn't have to do any of it by hand. I apparently overestimated my ability to pay attention to the pattern. First, I had trouble when I got to the second chart and couldn't get the first row to work out. I knit and tinked back the same row several times and even counted the stitches a couple of times before I realized that the second chart repeated several lines from the end of the first chart. So that was a good half hour of knitting time wasted. Then, after knitting quite a few rows on Tuesday afternoon, I looked down at the knitting and realized that I'd miscrossed about two-thirds of the cables several rows back. So I spent another hour or so dropping down the five stitches in each cable and reknitting them back up. The cables are now a bit sloppy but fixed. Here's what they look like:

And here's how they should look, for comparison:

Finally, here's what the whole yoke looks like now -- I'm definitely getting closer to the end of the cables and the complicated part that requires me to pay attention:

After this minor disaster, I decided that my brain was clearly not up to handling the complexity of the stitches required for this project, so I switched over to something much more brainless: stockinette socks. I'd started my pair in progress after Thanksgiving dinner and then promptly ignored it, but I managed to finish the second sock of the pair in about 24 hours (thanks to a movie and a long wait in a Verizon store when my father's phone stopped working and he had to get a new one).

Pattern: my basic stockinette, worked over 60 stitches with a 3x2 ribbed cuff
Yarn: Fibernymph Dye Works Traveler (sport weight; 80% superwash merino/20% nylon; 328 yds./100 g skein) in Coffee at Luke's
Needles: US 1 (2.25 mm) Addi Turbo Sock Rockets, magic loop
Started/Completed: November 24/December 21

I really enjoyed knitting these. It was my first time using Lisa's sport weight base, which reminded me a lot of Socks That Rock Lightweight (but with the added bonus of nylon), after having used her sock weight bases several times. Given the lower yardage in the skein, I opted for slightly shorter legs than usual (6 inches versus my normal 7), and I figured that 8 stitches per inch was a good gauge, so I went up a size from my usual needles. These have a good thickness to them, and I have just a small ball of yarn leftover, which will be good when I need some scrap yarn.

I have another skein of sock yarn here with me, and I'm planning to wind it up (by hand!) tomorrow so that I can cast on with it on Saturday, when we're driving to the other coast for the day to visit some family. Those will also be plain stockinette socks, but I have plans to do something a little different!