Finishing Streak

I'm taking a week off from work and have been catching up on some knitting while clearing things off my DVR queue. I finished two pair of socks in two days, including a pair of socks that I started around 2000. When I started knitting them, the Lacy Arrow-patterned Socks were farther outside my skill zone than I expected and I had a lot of trouble with the lace pattern. I spent more time ripping things out than actually making forward progress. I decided in 2008 to mark them as frogged in Ravelry, but never got around to actually ripping out the 1/2 to 2/3 of the first sock that I had completed. I finally finished the first sock in 2015, still having some trouble with the pattern if I was at all distracted. Between 2015 and 2017, I managed to get 3/4 of the second sock done. After finishing the beaded rib socks the day before, it seemed like a good time to sit down with the Lacy Arrow socks and see how far I could get. It was much faster than I expected.

The yarn is vintage Brunswick Nylamb that I traded a spinning book for back in the 1990s. It's a bright blue-red that reminds me of fresh blood.

The other socks that I finished were the most recent mindless knitting socks. Beaded rib pattern with Mountain Colors Weavers Wool Quarters in Gold Rush. I knit one sock with a 60 stitch foot and got stripes. The second sock I knit with a 64 stitch foot and got some pooling. Not enough of a difference to rip and re-knit the foot, but certainly a reminder to check my notes when picking up a project that I haven't worked on in a while. It even is a case for not putting projects down for extended periods of time.


I also finished the swatch I was knitting for the Queen Susan Shawl. I did not knit the full swatch pattern of one repeat of the shawl center. I knit about half the vertical repeat, cast off, and then washed and blocked it to see if the yarn halo would obscure the pattern too much. The good news is that the pattern does stand out quite nicely, even with the halo. The bad news is that I applied steam after unpinning the swatch and it immediately collapsed on itself again. I'll use this tidbit of information when caring for the finished project. Last night I took the leap and cast on the 271 stitches for the center of the shawl, then knit two rows. I'm now ready to start the patterning. I'd like to complete four to eight rows per week when I'm not traveling.

I've also cast on the second of the Leonore socks in Colinette Jitterbug. These will become my distracted knitting project. There's no way I'll be able to knit the Queen Susan Shawl while talking on the phone or paying much attention to the TV or an audiobook.