A Free and Easy Feeling

Now that my first sweater (ok, vest) and my first pair of socks are done, I feel kind of lost, but also kind of free. Sort of like the feeling after studying for final exams, and finally they're all done and endless summer looms. Or even, I was thinking, as if I had finished a thesis or something.

This morning I cast on and got a couple of inches done of a cotton washcloth in sunny yellow. After size 3's for the past 4 weeks, the size 8 feels enormous! And I also added a couple of rows to the set-aside gray mitten (I also converted it from 2 circs to one. Two circs is like training wheels, but really, one is far simpler. Far. Far. And I think I understand now how simple it is to divide up the stitches and join the round--slip the whole thing to the middle of the cable, pull the cable out through the center of the stitches, and then slide the two halves of stitches to the two needles again. How could I not see that before? It makes perfect sense now!

But anyhow, the washcloth will only take a day or two (she said ambitiously), and then what? I'm not really motivated to knit mittens at the moment, no matter what Elizabeth Zimmerman says about knitting mittens in the summer. Soooo....

With my feeling of freedom, I went back to Concepts in Yarn and bought two skeins of sock yarn, 100% hand-wash only merino wool, hand dyed in a colorway called Paprika. It's very pretty (and rather overpriced, since 2 socks worth came to almost $30!) But you know how you pick something up, and then talk yourself out of it, and then you come back and pick it up again, and then talk yourself out of it? Well I had already done that twice with this yarn. So I decided it was meant to be mine, since just two skeins in that color were available, and it was still sitting there, weeks after I first squeezed it. These will be really special socks, since they will be this peppery variegated red color plus hand-washable only. So I will take my time and when I'm ready, I will knit them. :-)



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