It's Like Christmas!

I just happened to be looking out the window when the mail lady pulled up in front of the house with a big box in her hands--a big box full of yarn from knit picks! It must be Christmas! No really, it's been *so* cold here this week, it even snowed on Rocky Top. It feels like Christmas. I've been doing a little sale shopping for spring/summer clothes & shoes or fabric to make my own clothes, so I feel very indulged in this week. The arrival of my yarn box was just the frosting on the cake.

I couldn't resist the KnitPicks sock yarn sale. I ordered two colors of parade to knit socks for my father. He wants socks that don't touch his ankles as they are very sensitive. It will be an adventure to knit big feet socks but at least I don't have to do much ribbing so that's a plus. The rest of the box is planned for me, but that could change. I love the 100% merino so I bought 2 colors (hydrangea, tropical sunrise) for socks for me and a bunch of the stargazer lily for the Sock Memories Shawl pattern. The shawl is a big rectangle and uses the home sweet home pattern. The shawl looks easy enough but I wish they had charted out the pattern. I'm hooked on the visual of charts now--it just makes so much more sense when you can see the design on paper and match up what you're knitting to it. It's also a lot faster to glance at a chart than read a bunch of encrypted text. I guess I'll be practicing my own charting skills for this one.

I also ordered 3 hanks of alpaca cloud in the mist colorway for another lace shawl. I used the peppermint pink AC for the flower basket shawl and it is totally yummy. I've worn my FBS so much! It has been the perfect thing to wrap around my neck and shoulders while puttering around the house or dashing out to run errands in the chilly March winds. I never thought I would wear it as much as I have. The pale periwinkle shade of my new alpaca cloud is lovely. I may just knit another FBS with it since the price is right--I already have the pattern and needles I need.

I've been knitting away on socks this week. My colorful Regia socks are coming along. I finished working the gusset on the 2nd sock last night. I hope to finish the pair this weekend. After all my false starts with this yarn I finally have a result I'm pleased with(the socks that is, the picture is terrible). I'm glad I knit a long cuff and even my experiment with extending the ribbing partway down the top of the instep looks interesting. I wanted the top ribbing to be there to assure a snug fit. The other pair of socks I knit without a real pattern ended being very baggy at the instep/arch and I didn't want that to happen again. I now know that I would have been OK without the extra ribbing as my heel flap depth was perfect this time, but a little extra caution never hurts!. And I now have the right yarn/needle size & stitch count to make simple socks that fit me perfectly. How cool is that?