Secret Socks

I actually have knitting content so I don't have to make up some blog fodder with sock reviews (I'll save that for another day.) Yesterday was an exciting day here in the Williams household. My sweetie had to go back to Virginia for our friends' wedding. Unfortunately I wasn't able to go given the $500 price tag for a single plane ticket. After dropping him off at the airport at 445am (!!!) it was a knitastic day. I spent most of the day knitting and ignoring my stay at home wife duties like dishes and laundry. I had to meet the realtor and decided instead of meeting him at the Barnes and Noble that's halfway between my apartment and the realtor's office, I'd drive down to the Barnes and Noble near his office since it happens to be less than 2 miles from a yarn store! I haven't had a yarn buying opportunity (besides internet buying) since Rhinebeck. That's almost a month of no new yarn! Well, I guess that's not true since I did have a fantastic package from my secret pal.

The yarn store I went to is called the Yarn Shop in Pickerington, Ohio. I heard about it from an Ohio knitting group on Ravelry. It was very nice, it lacked some of the atmosphere I'm used to in the high end yarn shops. But it was still very nice and there was a pretty big selection. Unfortunately there was not much in the way of sock yarn. Actually there was quite a bit, but it was not the sort of sock yarn I buy, it was all self-striping or self-patterning. They did have a small selection of their own hand dyed sock yarn, but none of the colors really spoke to me at all. Never fear I did still manage to purchase quite a lot:
- Victorian Lace Today (there's plenty of stuff I want to knit in the book, but I don't know why I bought it since I have yet to do a successful lace project except for socks)
- Knitting Fair Isle Mittens and Gloves
- Pace (3 skeins to make some fair isle fingerless gloves)
- Elsebeth Lavold Cotton Frappe (2 skeins to send to my secret pal)
- 3 packages of soak wool wash (my eucalan is in storage)
- stitch markers (not pictured, they are already in my knitting bag)

When I got home after that yarn binge, I spent the rest of the day knitting. I FINALLY finished the second of the secret pal socks. The second one came out quite different from the first one. The first one turned out pretty well variegated and I think it looks like pink camouflage, the second one had a lot of pooling and wound up with pink and green stripes down the leg and, they're broken up a few times so it doesn't look bad. I guess that's just one of the risks you take when making hand knit socks. I hope my secret pal doesn't mind! I've got a few more things to make for her and then I'll be ready to send the final package and reveal my secret identity!
Made for: My secret pal from secret pal 11
Yarn: Crystal Palace Yarns - Maizy
Needles: 2.75mm Knit picks dpns
Pattern: my own, just a simple stockinette sock
Size: Woman's size 8 foot