Done!

Yeah, here they are! I didn't trust myself to wait until for better weather for the "phot shoot"-- the color is so much deeper and truer in person)! I know I haven't posted lately, but I really have been knitting! These Sockapaloooza IV socks--well, I thought they might be the end of me! They have been variously known as "the socks that wouldn't end," the "why didn't I just make Thuja's," the "see what you get when you try to impress people you don't know," to, well, almost affectionately, "the brown bombers." This summer has taught me several things....when one is in the middle of a giant job stress, a baby is born in the family (a niece for me), and your cat of 14 years dies, one will quickly turn to knitting to comfort oneself. This is a good thing. In my case, though, it basically meant knitting everything except my Sockpal socks--so I made a couple pair of baby socks, a really cute baby hat, a pair of socks for no one in particular (a three-pointed modification of Jaywalkers), and a very lengthy, curiously non-essential silk and cotton scarf. Then I woke one morning about two weeks ago, dreaming about the giant balls of this gorgeous yarn sitting in my knitting basket with a cuff of the first sock and about 2 inches of a 10" cuff done, and well--I was having bad dreams about it! This gave me a chance to prove, one again, alas, that I work best under pressure, and that sore fingers are just the consequences of being me at the end of a knit a long! So the socks are done (phew) and washed and blocked, and drying. I will pack them up with some koigu and send them off to their guy in waiting, on time. I just knew finishing early during Sockapaloooza III was a fluke! But now that these are done, I like them and am glad I chose the pattern, which involved my first ever shaping on a cuff, and the most yarn I've ever used up on a pair of socks (525 yds+)!