Knitting Update, February

 Happy February!  January seemed like it flew by.  February is such a short month, I'm curious to see if I blink and miss it this year.  Just in case I do, here's a knitting update.

I finished my shortie Solor socks.  The pattern was easy to memorize, and made for some good mindless knitting while watching TV with DH.  He's much more fond of sitting and watching than I am, and it helped to have something to do with my hands and a portion of my brain.  

The 50g skein of yarn I used turned out to be not quite enough.  I played yarn chicken and lost by 2/3 of the toe on sock #2.  Bummer. I've won at yarn chicken with 50g of other yarn when making short socks, but this one was a tad shy. I dug out some remnant yarn from my stash of leftover sock yarns that matches pretty well to finish the toe decreases and grafting.  From the side, it's not so noticeable that I had to sub in different yarn.

From the top, it's definitely something that catches your eye.  Oh well.  Makes them a little quirky, and they're just for me, so not a big deal.  Overall, I do like them.

Literally right after casting on the Solor socks, my mom asked me if I would make her a pair of socks if she supplied the yarn.  This has become an annual request, so it wasn't unexpected.  In fact, it was part of the reason I'd decided to cast on for some short socks at the end of December.  I'm planning on making myself a full size (regular height) pair of socks later in 2023.

She dropped off her yarn choice--Supersocke 333 in colorway 2808 around the middle of January, and it's been waiting for me to finish my socks so that I can cast on for hers.  Due to not having a way to print out new patterns--our printer died in late November--I dug through my file of previously printed sock patterns and decided on Fairy Maidens.  I had used this pattern back in 2020 to make myself a short pair of socks.

I just cast on for Mom's socks on Monday night.  So far I have the cuff and two repeats of the 8 row leg design knit up.  It's a little hard to see with only two repeats done, but I think the pattern will work well with the self-striping yarn.

The Yarn Thief is eight years old now, but she still likes to keep an eye on my knitting.  In the picture below, I caught her calculating the distance between her and the yarn versus the distance between me and the yarn.  LOL!  Every now and then she does test her luck and try to do a snatch and grab on whatever yarn I'm using.

The book in the photo is A Mother's Rule of Life by Holly Pierlot.  I saw it mentioned in Ginny's blog recently, and borrowed a copy from my local library.  Even though it's written by a Catholic woman, clearly for Catholic women, and I'm a Lutheran, I'm still finding her book interesting, thought provoking, and useful.

Other books I read in January are:

• Amish Women by Louise Stoltzfus was a quick and easy read.  Each chapter is like a stand alone short story about a particular woman the author knew.
• The Flatshare by Beth O'Leary.  I loved this book.  It was a little predictable (you kind of knew at the start how it would end) but the twists and turns along the way are great.  Will definitely be looking for more from this author.
• The Gold in These Hills by Joanne Bischof.  I had read two other books by this author and loved them.  This one, I felt, fell a little flat.  Not bad enough to keep me from planning to read more from her, just not quite as engaging as the others.
• Fallen by Linda Castillo.  Another Kate Burkholder mystery, another book I could not put down.  I want to grab up the next in the series and dive right back in, but there's only two left (one of which isn't going to be published until this summer), so I will exercise some self control and wait a few months before reading the next one.  Linda Castillo has several short stories featuring Kate Burkholder that are available on Kindle, but I'm a 'real paper book' holdout still; I just find trying to read on a screen hampering.