Memory Lane

You know how TV shows sometimes don't know what to write so they do some kind of trip down memory lane? Well, dear blog readers, I hope I am not "jumping the shark" here but I was really stuck for a second post this week because my dear SO has been out of town and between taking care of things like car emissions inspections, doctors appointments and tax season, have not been having much fun this week to share.

But, still I'm pretty wedded to my publishing schedule, so I'm offering up a little retrospective of some early knitting projects.

(Note: if you see any typos in this post, I'm blaming the cat who is obsessed with walking over the keyboard this morning)


Here are the socks that launched 1,000 socks:
These are the now-famous socks that travelled back and forth to Buffalo several times so that my knitting mentor could turn the heel and then later graft the toes. Both socks made the trip twice. These socks took forever! But, the turned out nicely and spurred me on to learn how to do it myself. Now, it's second nature but then, it was hard!




Here is "the Italian job". I fell in love with this yarn which is Trendsetter and from Italy. Not cheap at all. In fact, it might have been the first sort of expensive project I took on. $75 for a scarf seemed like pure insanity to me at the time. I even had to track down another ball of it off of eBay because my local yarn store was all out...and I kntted and knitted...and then when it was done, I found out that stockinette stitch is so completely curly that I should have bordered it with garter stitch or something else to make the thing lay flat.

Yet, of course, no amount of blocking would cure the evil stockinette curse. I wore it with my camel colored coat all that first winter...and it pilled.









And, then, finally, the first step to sock freedom:



My first independently made socks made in a class. These were made from the toe up. I would use this pattern a number of times before I decided I then needed to learn how to make socks top down and really contend with the heel and the toe. I actually had to rip them out and knit them several times as I recall (I think that was over an April Florida vacation one year).

Sadly, I hardly ever wear these. I am out of love with the color and the cuff is shorter than I like.

These projects all hail from about four years ago...not that long ago but it's gratifying to see how far I've come!