Oh, For the Love of Socks!

So, in my last post, I dreamed of owning this kit: Sock Cocktails (except in the Violet Martini flavor . . . they're now out of it).  And now, a couple of weeks later, guess what is now in my possession?

Yep.  The Violet Martini Sock Cocktail kit from Knit Picks is mine.  Now, for the first time in my life, I have ten skeins of quality sock yarn in my possession.  I know that, as Peter Parker so aptly declared, "with great fiber comes great responsibility."  All right . . . so it wasn't exactly like that, but you get the point.  It's good fiber, and I'm going to enjoy it.

Ahem . . . cough, cough.  Anyway.  At the beginning of the week, I cast on my first pair of toe-up socks!  It was exciting.  I'm really enjoying this method of sock-making.  It probably won't prevent the dreaded second-sock syndrome, but it definitely makes me happy.  I mean . . . the tricky part (the toe) is already done. 

Hat-ness

Alright, I'm not going to lie... I've become a little bit obsessed with hats over the course of this school year... Not only have a made a few of them, but my cousin gave me one she made for me for Christmas, and I rediscovered one that another friend of mine made for me for Christmas last year.  Let's recap my year in hats, shall we? 

 Hat #1: Imagination Beret

I started this back in August, about two weeks before coming to college for the first time.  This hat was one of my safety-net projects.  For at least the first month of my first semester, I had a knitting project in my backpack.  I made it with KnitPicks Imagination yarn in "Unicorn."  It took one skein and US 6 circulars.  This is the first hat I've ever made and opened up the doors for the other hats that I made over the course of this school year, as well as the hats that I want to make.

 Hat #2: Winter Hat

This hat was inspired by the cold weather that we had this year.  It suddenly dawned on me that it was cold . . . and I need to walk from one building to another in order to get anywhere on campus.  As a result, I need something to keep my head warm during the commute from one building to the next.  It's not a difficult hat to make . . . it's really just a whole bunch of ribbing . . . and fuzzy stuff along the hem.  I made it during the time before Christmas Break.  When it was done, it was just missing something, so when I got home, I found this fuzzy eyelash-type yarn that was perfect.

Hat #3: Slouchy Hat

This is my most recent hat.  I felt the need to make another hat towards the end of Christmas Break.  The only challenge about this hat was what colors to make it in.  It called for worsted-weight yarn, but I only had one wool yarn that I wanted to use, everything else was the wrong weight or wrong material or something to that effect.  However, I realized that, when I hold two lace-weight yarns together, it forms a thickness that was pretty similar to the worsted weight.  The colors were kind of a shot in the dark; I wasn't sure whether the blue-purple combination would work.  Fortunately, it did and it's one of my favorite things to wear.

So those are the hats that I've made.  I also want to make a few other hats . . . at the moment, though, I'm embarking on another sweater.  It's going to be really nice.  I'm using Paton's Classic Wool Merino in the colorway "Dark Grey Mix."  The sleeve-length of my sweaters seem to be gradually getting longer.  My first sweater (the blue "Diamond Mesh" sweater) was short-sleeved.  This one is three-quarters length.  I'll upload pictures soon, hopefully.  I'm almost done with the first sleeve.