Another Resolution

My daughter (sometimes known as Hurricane Clara) is headed back to college today. I spent the first couple of hours after she left cleaning up the aftermath (not quite as bad as Katrina, but close)and restocking the larder (she finished the milk last night and didn't tell me, so I had to open a can of evaporated milk for my coffee this morning). But since I finished with all that, I have been pacing the house and eating things I shouldn't. Pete, too, is wandering around looking a little lost. We miss our kid. Just as it takes a little while to get used to having her home again, we go through withdrawal each time she leaves.

But -- I have my resolutions to fill my time! Although I had some ebay group launches to participate in this week and have been hemming several pairs of jeans for Clara, I am making progress on my laptop case, and have other unfinished items lined up and ready to be worked on.

My second resolution this year (the first was finishing up several of my UFOs) is to learn how to knit socks. Socks and sock yarn are all the rage in the knitting community these days. I am not an advanced knitter, even though my mother taught me how to knit when I was around 8 years old. Here's a pic of the only knitted item I have from back then.



It's a top for my Barbie doll. Just a little boxy and a little bright. I keep it on my bureau . . . I smile whenever I see it.

I also knitted a lovely little peach colored sweater for Clara when she was a baby, but never anything for myself. Knitting never came easy to me -- I'd get very stiff and end up with my shoulders near my ears. But last year, Clara wanted to learn how to knit and, lo and behold, I could do it with ending up in a fetal position.

When Barb and I started vending at the New York State Sheep and Wool Festival we met a woman named Toni from The Fold in Marengo, Illinois. She always has a long line of customers snaking through the building and she always has a smile on her face. What does she sell? Sock yarn! The most gorgeous sock yarn you can imagine. So this year I bought a skein and promised myself I would learn to knit socks in 2008.

Here's my yarn.



It's called Socks that Rock from Blue Moon Fiber Arts. The colorway is Gibson. Normally, this wouldn't be my first color choice, but it was the end of the Festival and Toni had just about sold out of the 1,000 skeins she had brought along! (That's probably why she smiles so much.) So I bought what she had.

Last week I joined a group of knitters at our local library led by my friend Christine Henson of Now and Zen Yarns here in Greenport. So far she's had me practicing on small, double pointed needles. I'm hoping I'll start on socks this Tuesday. I'll keep you posted.