Completed Neptune Socks

Neptune Socks
Originally uploaded by sunasak

Here, with a lovely pink blanket background are the Neptune socks in all their completed glory. I finished them in the new pickup truck, AKA the Limo, on the way to scenic rural Yorktown, Texas.

I sure do like them. They are going to look really sharp with shoes and jeans, and perhaps even dress pants. Lately I've been hiding socks I knit under my dress pants because it is COLD at work. (Today I am wearing Coupling socks and my Juliet sweater, PLUS a hand-knit necklace by my LYS colleague Amy (photo to come). I all hand knitting, all the time.)

I didn't bind off quite as loosely on sock #2 and it looks better than sock #1 off the foot, but they look the same on. The heel came out more interesting on sock #1, though. I truly enjoyed knitting with this Sea Wool yarn using the interesting textured pattern, and know these will be favorites for years to come. They fit SO well, too.

Other Progress and Cheer

I did start my Campanula for the Cure socks in the car on the way home yesterday. I am well into the third pattern repeat. I did the toes differently than the pattern asked, since I still don't really like to do short row toes (I will do the heel suggested, having seen others have issues when trying a different heel on those socks). I did the nice Turkish cast on toe, starting with 14 stitches. It came out fine. The Pale Fire yarn looks great with the Campanula lace--it's slight color variations don't detract at all from the flowers.

Whew, the lace pattern is not for the faint of heart. No chart, just words, and different numbers of stitches on different rows. Even a teeny bit of pattern on the "resting" rows! And my favorite stitch, knit 3 together through back loop. At least the KnitPicks needles let me manage it successfully. The resulting flowers are really lovely, though, and Ramona did a great job mirroring their directions. I will post a photo tomorrow or the next day!

I also want to post a photo of the mystery pentagonal project. It moved along a bit this weekend, too. It's becoming quite festive, but needed more Noro Kureyon on Saturday.

Here's the sweet story of how I got more Noro: at the LYS on Saturday, a lady came in with a store-bought sweater she had hoped to get fixed. Pat was looking at it and thinking it coulld not be fixed, but a bunch of customers came in so I said I'd take a look. It turned out to be an intarsia ribbon-knit sweater and one of the knots between colors had come undone, causing one stitch to unravel. I told the lady I could fix it, and she said she'd leave it and come back. I said, no, it would just take about ten minutes. She was incredulous at that. So, I got a little crochet hook and fixed the dropped stitch, then tied it all back together. Even I was impressed--you couldn't tell I'd been working on it!

The lady wanted to pay me, because she adored the sweater and was thrilled to have it back, but really, I just did it to be nice. Heck, it was fun to fix it! When she insisted I suggested she buy me a ball of yarn. I pointed to the two skeins of Kureyon I was going to pick up, and she insisted on buying me both of them. So, the mystery project will not be too expensive after all, and I won't rue wasted money if it doesn't felt up the way I want it to.

So, good knitting karma all around! Stay tuned for more tomorrow!