Diving In

So, the summer of socks has begun. And I've discovered that sport weight sock yarn moves fast. Thursday morning I had a meeting first thing. So, I didn't go into work first. That gave me an extra 45 minutes in the morning. I settled into the couch, put on MSNBC and grabbed some sock yarn.

The appeal of the Summer of Socks is that I have so much sock yarn, and yet I rarely make time to make socks. There's always something else more pressing to be made. For instance,
my best friend, The Trendy One, and her husband just adopted a little boy. So, here's a baby to knit for that came with no warning. (None for them either, they got the call Thursday as the birth mother was in labor, and brought him home on Saturday.) This little guys is so special to his new parents that he needs some extra special knits. And then there's my cousin's baby who is due in October. I thought I had plenty of time to get some projects together for him or her, but now my cousin and her husband are being transferred to London in August, and my aunt wants to have the shower before they leave. And without a commute on public transit or anything resembling a real lunch hour, socks get left in the "eventually" pile.

Now, I have no delusions that I will even come close to having the highest sock count (especially not with Wendy as a co-participant). But, I have a personal goal of getting at least a few socks stored up for winter.

My first pair, I'm calling Bendy:

Yarn: Zen String sport weight in the "Ben" colorway
Pattern: Wendy's generic toe-up sock pattern
(Wendy + Ben = Bendy...I'm quite the clever one, aren't I?)

I bought this yarn shortly after Wendy posted about it. I ordered directly from Angelina, and the service was fabulous (as are the stitch markers). The socks are intended as a belated birthday present for my sister-in-law, whose son is the cutest boy in the world...named Ben.

I'm just doing these in plain stockinette stitch. I tend to prefer socks with stitch patterns; it makes it easier to make sure they come out even. But the color seemed to just want to speak for itself.

Knitting socks in sport weight just flies! I can't believe how much I've accomplished in just a few days. I think it's a definite possibility that I will have these done in time for the 4th of July picnic with Geek Boy's family.

Do you like the Santa? I think he's going to be the sock model for the summer. Geek Boy has a thing for animatronic Christmas decorations. So, a few years ago, my folks got him this Santa. We didn't want to haul him up and down from the attic every year. To avoid this, we just decided to we would deck him out in seasonally appropriate wear. Each summer he sports a different Hawaiian shirt. This year he's wearing the "hops" pattern, when Geek Boy isn't wearing it. The Shrek ears are in honor of the fact that we just went with The Sisters (my cousins and sister) to see Shrek the Third, a tradition that continues despite the fact that"the kids" are now in their twenties.