Jan lull

It is Jan. The Christmas knitting rush is over as are my hopes of getting various things done for Christmas/New Years for myself.

I'm settling nicely into some sock knitting for me (one pair of Slippery Socks done, half + of a pair of plain old wonderful generic stockinette socks in Austermann Step for watching football, and a pair of Bellatrix underway - more below). I am slowly replacing all my non-athletic socks with hand knit ones.

There are a few other things, some left overs from last year, most especially a shawl in my first skein of mini-maiden, and the mohair shrug - currently in a shoe box under the chair in the living room. Plus the spinning that is out on my desk. I'm spinning up the green Fleece Artist (merino/alpaca blend), which is pretty but I'm not sure I like the put up, it got very, um, gnarly, just sitting in the basket. I'd also like to ply what I've got of the cosmic blue and spin up some more of it - when I get better I'll tackle the luscious purple bamboo from Glenna. And then there are the things I have yarn for I want to knit - the red carpet convertible -which I started but frogged because I did something backwards and then forgot where I was... and Cochella, and oh, another half a dozen sock patterns/yarns or so including: Thelonius, Gothic Spires, and Esther.

The Bellatrix socks are the January project for the Thrifty Knitters Sock Club on Ravelry. I'm using the hideous yarn I overdyed, which turned out a great emerald and black - perfect Slytherin socks. Only problem, I knit the leg - great, heel - great and I even did the flap, and foot - problem ... not enough yardage oops! So I frogged back to the leg and set up for an after-thought heel (a la after-thought thumbs on mittens, as in I'm not gonna cut anything, I used waste yarn to knit across the sts I'll want when I go back to do the heel). I'm nearly through the foot now and will have to see whether I will: a) have enough yarn and b) want to do the toes in the main colour, I'll probably find myself some black for the heels (and toes if need be).

I'll be slowing down a lot for the next while knittingwise as I try to get serious with my thesis (aka- the shirts will keep waiting and the socks will go more slowly and the mittens I want to knit will take a couple weeks instead of two days). My goal is to have 25-ish pgs for the 5th of Feb when I have to meet with my supervisor and give some kind of account of my last several months. Somehow I don't think my FO list will go over well as an explaination of where last semester went...