Back On The Sock Wagon

Four years ago I had an afternoon all to myself while on business travel in Seattle. I happened upon a little knitting shop right by my company's office building, which turned out to be a great place to while away the afternoon. I think that was my first visit to a small independent yarn store; all my previous craft shopping was at the big stores - Hobby Lobby, JoAnn, and even Wal-Mart. So I was totally unprepared for - and overwhelmed by - the winding aisles full of beautiful, soft yarns in every color imaginable. I wandered for a while, wishing I knew how to work the gorgeous yarns into something other than a dish towel or scarf. I must have looked lost, but the shopkeeper was kind and guided me to a sock project. She set me up with three balls of Cascade Fixation yarn, my first set of double pointed needles, and a pattern.

The color number is no longer listed as an offering on the Fixation page at Cascade Yarn.  That's how long I've had this project lying around.  But I love the stormy blues and I think they'll be really nice.  I'll call them my Seattle socks.

To my surprise she invited me to sit down and knit a while, which was good because I really had no clue what I was doing. But by the time I left, I had a few rounds of ribbed cuff started.

Four years later, I'm ready to actually make the socks. After attempting a couple other patterns, I realized I don't really like the pattern the shopkeeper picked out for me. AND I'm a little worried about how the elastic content of the yarn will affect a pattern not written for it.  Thankfully a good friend introduced me to Ravelry, a wonderful social site for knitters where you can find lots of patterns for free.  AND you can search for patterns specifically by yarn. I found one pattern using I liked using the Fixation yarn, but it was only a reference to a pattern published in a book.

Well I have the book now and I'm ready to go. The premise of the book is that you can knit two socks at the same time on two circular needles. (this blows my mind!!)  I'm excited about this because I'm not good at finishing projects - but the pair of socks will knit up at the same time and they'll match perfectly when finished.  I won't have to worry about when I'll get to the second sock or if it'll be the same length.  I've got the required stitches cast on; we'll see how it goes!

Hopefully this will turn into some cute socks soon!