Hello Dear Readers!  After a long weekend spent traveling halfway across the country, my world has shrunk to here:

A little ball of Eloise

Snuggle Malthus

I picked up a cold somewhere in San Francisco, and thinking back to all the surfaces I came into contact, I’m really glad that this is all I picked up.  It is a dirty, dirty, dirty city.

My week of frogging was topped off by the discovery that my Katherine Hepburn Fancy Trouser Socks were too small.  I say “discovery” like it came to me like a bolt from the blue.  It didn’t.  One of the knit night ladies, a sock knitting machine, took one look at it, said “That sock looks awfully small,” and fished out one of her own for comparison.  She was right: it was not even a smidge too small, it was at least two inches too small.  My desperation was such that I even blocked it, but it didn’t grow at all and I had to admit to myself that denial ain’t a river in Egypt.

I immediately cast on again, using the same sock size (medium) but larger (size 2) needles.  Now the socks are actually human sized but still slightly smaller than my first pair.  I had to look twice to verify this: the first pair of socks are a size small, but they are definitely larger than this pair.  My best guess at an explanation is that I am picking rather than throwing.  Knitting this way has become much more natural than when I started in April, but my gauge is consistently snug.  Or shall I say more snug: I have always been a tight knitter.

The socks traveled with me to SF and back.  I had forgotten how awesome it is to travel with socks.  If you’ve never done so, you must.  They’re amazing: light, easy to take out and put away, and better still, all the little moments of knitting time add up quickly.  As you can see in the picture with Eloise, I am past the heel (now past the gusset), so the size these socks are is the size they will remain.  Worst case scenario, one of las hermanas will get a new pair of handknit socks.  I am still a fan of both the German Herringbone stitch pattern and the sock pattern itself, so knitting a third pair would not be a problem.

And now, dear readers, I am afraid my ability to focus has dwindled away to nothing (one of the worst parts of having a cold: you’re stuck sitting around and can’t concentrate enough to fill the sniffly hours).  Happy knitting, and don’t forget to wash your hands.