Croc Socks Almost Rock

Just a Little Croc'ing

Cue up "Crocodile Rock". Friday night saw the completion of my Crocs. Here they are in their finished glory. They're fraternal, but its not something you notice too much given the randomness of the pattern.

Reptile Feet

The only place these socks Croc'd in was the inch or so after the heel gusset. I suspect if I'd done the socks a little wider or a little narrower I'd have seen Croc'ing all the way. I cast on 64 stitches and got about 8 stitches/inch and was using US 1s.

Croc'd A Little

Here's a close up of the area that Croc'd. I thought about trying some more of this yarn, but there's a lot of sock yarn out there and life's too short to knit too many pairs of socks that don't leave me excited. I've got enough left for a child-sized pair of socks so maybe someday I'll go back and try again.

On Saturday I got together with Julie. I got to see her new Lily bag up close. Both the one on her website and another that will be revealed later. It's a lovely pattern.

I did a lot of swatching while we were together. The results will be revealed as the week progresses, but since the Crocs were finished, the first thing I tried out was the Mountain Colors Bearfoot yarn I bought last weekend. Here's a better shot of the skein. The colorway is "Pheasant".

Mountain Colors Bearfoot Pheasant

My folks have the occasional pheasant wandering through their backyard. This yarn is a little darker than in the picture, and very evocative of the bird and its colors. Bearfoot is a superwash wool, mohair, nylong blend and is just about the softest sock yarn that has ever run through my fingers. These socks are for the dear friend who taught me how to knit. She's a pediatrician and a dancer and a researcher and a knitter (amongst other things) and spends a lot of time on her feet. I figured soft warm socks would work out as a nice birthday gift. Of course, she won't get them until Christmas... but she understands that it's hard to put deadlines on knitting projects.

While I was sitting their swatching and watching Julie work on her second Lily, I started to think about a felted design that I've had floating around in my brain and on paper for a while. Initially I'd wanted to do it for Knitty, but then I decided that I'd have more fun doing the project and documenting it on my blog. I had the yarn skeined up. I had my pattern mostly written out and I'd figured out how I was going to deal with a few design elements.

Why haven't I knitted it then? Not sure. Lately I don't feel like I can be monogamous with any one project. There's so much that I want to do and try that it's distracting me from accomplishing much. That's an ongoing theme in my life: an embarrassment of riches that leads to an inability to progress. Just ask my PhD advisor...

So when I got home from being inspired by Julie, I wandered into my stash room. Of course, all my unfinished projects had something to say... Mom's sweater looked at me forlornly, Dad's Lo Tech begged for some acknowledgement, the little cabled sock that I started for John reminded me that it's only cold for a little while, and half a dozen skeins that haven't even been cast on reminded me how neglected they were feeling. And then there were these two skeins:

Charcoal and Grey Beginnings

These two skeins represented my own creativity and somehow, at that moment, it seemed pretty terrible that I was shoving my own ideas aside for other peoples. Why was I afraid of bringing my idea into being?

I don't have an answer for that question, but combined with watching Julie's Lily, it got me motivated. This week I am going to work on my own design. Here's the start of the project I'm calling "Chicago":

Invisible Cast On

I know.. not much to see yet. This is just the invisible cast on for the bottom. More and better to come.