Psst!

(tosses pebble to distract Knitting Goddess away from project)

I'm ready to start the toe decreases! Took hardly any time at all, once I got going. This pattern moves really quickly.

While I was in Santa Fe this past April, I remarked to the lady at the yarn store that when I used wooden needles, my knitting seemed to go faster. She replied, "it's because wood is a natural material."

Well, I thought about this, and went back and looked at my finished socks. Every one of them that had stripes was completed quickly. My three pairs that were of semi-solid colors took forever, and one of them I never finished -- and that one was on wooden needles.

So, I have a theory now. When you're working with self-striping yarn, you tend to think of the sock in units, and work on it that way -- "I'll stop when I get to the end of the blue" -- and you push yourself just a teeny bit. When the sock's a semi-solid, there's no point to strive for. It doesn't matter what kind of needle you use.

In the case of the Child's French Sock I'm in danger of completing (psst! Knitting Goddess! Look, a sheep just ran thataway!), I know I pushed myself to complete six-row units, so that when I put it down, it would be ready to start a unit again. I could easily see how far I'd gone, and knew how much was left to knit until the heel, until the toe, etc. Yes, it took me about two and a half weeks, but that's the fastest I've done a sock yet. And I'm using my Susan Bates Quicksilvers, no.2. I'm stopping the foot one design unit earlier than the pattern calls for, because I put it on and discovered that it's already long enough. So, it's not the needles, it's not the yarn, it's what you do in your head that makes the work go fast.

This sock has a longer heel flap than any I've yet made, but it makes for a really comfortable sock. It's a new heel-turning to me, too, and I like it a lot. I'll include close-up photos when it's done.

Well, there are still forty-three days of Summer of Socks yet to go. I'll try to scream through the second CFS and get another pair done before September 21, the end of the knitalong. Next up? Not sure... but they'll have stripes or a pattern, that's for sure.