Socks, socks, socks

Well. The blanket has been put on hold for a couple of days. It still thrills me, I adore it... but for the moment, I must regretfully turn away from its charms. I seem to have been siezed by an inexplicable - yet utterly overwhelming - NEED to knit socks.

Not just plain socks, of course. Couldn't possibly commit myself to anything quite that rational, no, not me.

I knit plenty of plain socks. So many that I have my own Standard Sock Pattern No. 1 memorized, in several sizes and with several variants.

Could I content myself with that? Heck, no. What am I knitting? Hold your breath.

Sock No. 1 (almost done) along with Sock No. 2 (not quite so far along):

Fair Isle. Booties. Cotton. Toe-up. Afterthought heel. No pattern. Designed on the fly.

Clearly I need medication. No part of this sounds like a good idea. Why I am having so much fun with it is a great, great mystery.

The plan for the other sock is to use the same colorway in more or less the same proportion but different stitch patterns, so they will match but not match. Embrace the random, that's what I say. That, and I fear for what tiny bits of sanity remain to me if I try to precisely reproduce Sock No. 1.

Here's sock-in-progress, being modeled by its eventual wearer (that would be me). A polite reader would pretend that she doesn't see the bristly, unshaven ankles attached to the sock.

I like me some Fair Isle, I really do. But what made me think that a proper application for Fair Isle would be booties, in which ALL the freakin' Fair Isle that I have labored over will be hidden by my STUPID SHOES??? Yeesh. I think I've been overcome by the wool fumes.

Also plonking away at some rather fetching lace girly girl socks:

Made from some utterly luscious Koigu in a ridged Feather and Fan variant. Be still my heart. I am a bit annoyed at the rolling cuff edge - should have come up with a better plan for cast-on - but I figure it will either unroll itself during wear, or it's really a Design Element and I meant to do it that way.

Gotta love Design Elements.

There is another lace sock in progress, btw. The heel is turned, I am working my way through the endless gussets, it looks a lot more like a sock than the one in the picture.

And where is this much more highly evolved and photo-worthy sock, you ask? Um. Well. That's a very good question and in time I may have a good answer. Until then, let's just say that Sock No. 1 is in an Undisclosed Location.

You don't need to know.

Apparently, at the moment, neither do I.

The Sock Gods are playing a little trick on me, yes they are. I'm sure they will reveal the whereabouts of Sock No. 1 in the fullness of time. It may take the sacrifice of a live chicken, but it will show up. Sooner or later. Honest.

The sock gods might not have been in the mood for such naughtiness if I had knit with some of my handspun sock yarn. But, I have a wee tiny stash of commercial yarn from the time when I was a knitter but not yet a spinner, and most of it is very nice stuff that I feel I ought to be using for something.

OK, that was a lie, and a big fat bald one at that. My commercial stash is gigantic. Lovely, but gigantic, and poorly behaved. The stashbeast totally took over my walk-in closet and then oozed out into the bedroom, the living room and (though we need not speak of this) the kitchen. Add to that my growing handspun stash and you can see We Have a Slight Problem.

So, I am knitting socks with commerical yarn in an attempt to put at least my commercial stash on a bit of a diet.

I estimate that finishing these two pairs of socks will reduce The Beast by approximately 0.001%. But that is how we eat an elephant - one spoonful at a time.

Onward.