Wednesday, February 24, 2016

Purrrrrrrrrrple! Paging Petronella Osgood - Broadripple Socks (Link)

When Cory was just a baby I undertook to teach him his colors and letters and other important stuff, just like parents have done from the beginning of time. As it turned out, I had a talent for sound  effects, and my specialty turned out to be the word "purple." 

Purrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr - pullllll! Repeat that a few hundred times, and by gosh, he got it.  Purple is still a favorite color, and we still do sound effects (Exxxxxxx - it! Gotta love those Sesame Street tapes.) So I guess it is no surprise that I have an inordinate number of purple socks and balls of yarn waiting to be made into purple socks. The socks I just finished are screamingly purple, which suits me just fine.


What doesn't suit me is that it has been such a long time since I finished a pair of socks that my fine finishing skills got a bit sloppy and I am unhappy with the toe I laboriously grafted close last night. 


The one on the left was grafted quite a while ago - perfect. The one on the right, last night's effort - not so much.

Never mind that I ungrafted and regrafted, and did some secret repair work from inside - it wasn't as perfect as I know I am capable of, and that annoys me to no end. Not so much that I won't wear them - tonight, to Tai Chi class - but just enough to step on a nerve. They are a little gappy in the ankle, but I never let that bother me. I have these dinky little ankles that have never been adequate to my weight, which is why I fell down so much back in my Big Girl days. As long as the socks stay up - and they do - I'm sock-happy.


Colors have such a direct effect on mood, and knitting is part of that. As relaxing as knitting is, there are colors I veer away from, such as red, orange, and certain greens, because they seem to poke me in the eyes and skew my knitting chi. In 2005, I left angry bunches of ripped out fuzzy red yarn stuffed into garbage pails all over the Republic of South Korea, switching instead to - you guessed it, purple - which I actually finished as a sleeveless sweater and wore on my last night there.


(Sadly, no one in South Korea is currently following my blog; Germany and Ireland are fighting for the number two spot like Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, and my single loyal Canadian is bringing up the rear).

I have plans for today, which involve lots of fresh black coffee, laundry, and my next knitting project, which has already had the Big Reveal.


These are Broadripple socks, an original pattern by Rob Matyska, well-known in sock-knitting circles as a classic. The pattern is free at the Knitty link. I am using 2 skeins of Paton's Kroc Socks Stripes, color way Sultana Stripes, on size 2 DPNs.


One other thing that has been poking at my knitting conscience is a rather massive finishing project on a scarf.


A Very Big Scarf, perhaps the biggest hand knit scarf in the Known Whoniverse. (Yes, that is exactly what you think it is. So I'm a geek, shun me, kill me, laugh at me - my neck won't be freezing come next winter!)


Everything's got to end sometime. (Put another way, every end has to be ended.) Otherwise nothing would ever get started. Time to weave in those ends. Oy gevalt!

In making today's plans, I conveniently ignored the very real possibility that my fibromyalgia was going to sneak up and kick me in the back. Well, so it did. To which I replied "screw you", swallowed the appropriate doses of Advil and muscle relaxer and kept on truckin'. 

Fibromyalgics of the world, unite! And keep on trucking. Or take a nap. Either way, be kind to yourself. 

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