Good Start to a New Year

This will be posted later tonight  because it seems that using my new internet solution (T-Mobile wireless) on a big national holiday is sort of like revisiting the old dial-up days. I can't seem to upload photos to Blogger or to Flickr.  (Makes me wonder why my former employer, The Big Corporation, still thinks dial-up is a viable option ... might explain the stock price!)  It still beats the crappy service I was getting from Bellsouth so I'll hush my crankiness now.


Anyway, there's an old wives tale that the way you spend the change of years will determine how you spend the coming year. There was a time in my life when that would have boded for some very exciting times in the next 12 months. Nowadays, it's a little different.

At  midnight I was casting on a new sock--not a new pair of socks, but the second sock in a pair started October-ish of last year. Debra gave me two lovely skeins of Mini Mochi and I knit the first sock up quickly and then ... er ... misplaced it. I unearthed it yesterday in a fit of organizational frenzy and the new sock is on the needles. 


I've read several critical reviews of this unplied yarn but I have to say I really love it. It's VERY soft and I don't know what that will mean for long-term wear but I'm willing to take the risk. Beautiful!


Since last night was also the  first Blue Moon since 1990 and the last one expected until 2028, the color is completely appropriate, don't you think?


And this morning I finished off two more pairs of socks--one just needed the ends woven in. That's the newest Zauberball Crazy socks, which were originally intended as a Christmas gift but which have reverted to their most deserving owner, Me, or maybe they'll go into the gift box.


And the pair completed just before those were also Zauberball Crazy, but totally different. This pair needed a little more surgery to finish them. Here's the story:


In October when Candace Eisner Strick was here she taught us several new bind-offs, including the tubular cast-off. I couldn't wait to try it on the Zauberballs on the needles and the result was absolutely gorgeous--elegant, even. I think it's the nicest looking sock top I've ever made. Unfortunately, as elegant as they were, the top would barely stretch over my heifer-like ankles. Yet, it was too beautiful to frog. A problem, no? The second sock was made with my traditional stretchy top and fit like a champ. But still I couldn't bring myself to fix the first sock.


This morning, I frogged. And let me say, not only is the tubular cast-off the most elegant of all the bind-offs, it's also the most structurally sound I've ever seen. It took the precision and patience of a CSI investigator to get it out. Anthropologists in the next century will be trying to deconstruct socks with tubular cast-offs without success. The equivalent of the knitting cockroach--can't be killed! But now it's gone, and replaced with Old Faithful (which is knit first stitch, knit second stitch, then place both back on the lefthand needle and knit together through the back loop, then repeat, using that stitch as the first stitch.)


By the way, both of my sisters are probably thinking I've lost my mind right now. I can tell this is so because of the stunned silence emanating from Arizona and Virginia, where they've both opened their Christmas packages and found ... Zauberball.  


It's not exaggerating to say that I have fallen deeply in love with Zauberball, in a way heretofore reserved for Opal and Malabrigo. Neither of my sisters reads this blog, so they'll just have to wait until their curiosity gets the better of them and they ask why, why, why I sent that weird yarn to them.  


Debbie has two new granddaughters so I'm sure she's not even contemplating knitting socks for grownups at this point, but eventually she has to come out of that mode and remember that she and her sons and even Caitlin need socks. And Deirdre has only recently begun to knit socks and I'm sure she's more conservative than I am. 


But one day they will know The Truth and they'll be ready for Zauberball. And then they'll realize the sacrifice I made in sending Zauberball to them that I could have kept for myself.


(There's a rumor in the lace world that Zauberball now comes in laceweight. Elyse from Only Ewe and Cotton Too has ordered it but I haven't heard from her so I'm assuming it's not in yet. When it is ... oh, my!)
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