It snowed a lot yesterday.
That is across the street from my house. Convenient street sign is provided for scale. We got about sixteen inches. On top of the foot or so that was lingering from the last three storms.
Despite my growing desire for a solid week of, say, fifty-degree weather, it’s really lovely right now. While I was outside shoveling, I looked up at a lucky moment and caught the sunlight glistening off the ice limning the tree branches, and it was so lovely I had to go fumbling for my phone to try to capture the moment:
This doesn’t even come close, but in order to witness it yourself you’d have had to help with the shoveling.
It’s a good thing I have a plan for how to fill all this snow-bound time.
DUMBLEDORE SOCKS
Pattern: Stockinette socks
Yarn: Opal Harry Potter sock yarn in Dumbledore
Needles: US 1/2.25 mm DPNs
Notes: This is the last of my hoarded Potter sock yarn, to go with my Hedwig socks and Ron socks. This time, we had Dumbledore’s colorway, which fittingly had lots of pinks and purples and blues, entirely in keeping with the headmaster’s personality and characterization. Of all the characters in the Potter books, Dumbledore is the one who most deserves both a colorway, and to have a pair of socks made for them, and I was quite glad to oblige. And I have enough yarn left that I could probably squeak out another pair, especially if I find some contrast yarn for heels and toes.
(Will you look at all that snow? And there’s more on the way. Oi…)
So I have a plan here, and these socks are part of it. This plan consists of several points. They are as follows:
-I really enjoyed doing 12 socks in 12 months in 2009, and I’ve been knitting for long enough now that some of my earliest socks are beginning to wear out, so I need to knit more socks to ensure my delicate feet remain warm and cozy
-I love the idea of the Yarn Harlot’s self-imposed sock club, where you pick out 12 sock patterns and 12 skeins of yarn and set them aside and make one pair of socks every month
-LSG, my favorite hangout on Ravelry, is doing an 11 in 11 project, where you commit to knitting eleven items in 2011.
So I combined all those things, mixed them, and when I was done I had my own version of the self-imposed sock club, which conveniently also satisfies doing eleven items this year, with one to grow on. My plan is rather informal. I marked a bunch of the more complicated patterns in my Rav queue I’ve been wanting to get to, and over the course of the year I am going work on six of them, and the other six socks can be stockinette or ribbing to use up some of my more variegated and wild yarns. I can pick and choose whichever I want to work on each month depending on what else is on the needles at the moment.
All this is my long-winded way of saying I one sock down, eleven to go, and I have four days of figuring out if I want to do Bayerische Socks or Rivendell or Twisted or 14 Karat. Feel free to try to sway me to one or another. Extra points given for creativity in your responses.