witchy: the story of a wip

A couple of days before my birthday Phoe posted that it was her birthday, and she had some yarn she didn’t want and would someone take it, perhaps in a trade? I didn’t bring much yarn with me to Europe, so I said I’d pay her for the yarn, and, well, yeah! I got a lovely packet in the mail the other day:

Discontinued Violet Green Socrates Merino 4ply sock yarn. What’s that at the bottom of the pyramid? A sock-in-progress? Why yes, yes it is!

Recently I’ve stopped being enthusiastic enough about school to carry me through a 4-hour class in the morning without completely losing it. What do you do in that situation? Well, I knit socks. It’s a fantastic solution: gets me playing with yarn and I get pretty new socks out of the deal. (What happened to the scaly Leyburn socks, you ask? Well I want to wash and block them before I photograph them and show them off, and I don’t have anything to wash them with… and I’m planning on going to two yarn stores on Monday. I’m sure there’ll be some kind of wool wash there.)

At first I wrote down a German pattern for this yarn. I’ve been wanting to knit Berlin Muster, simply because I’m here, but I’m not extremely impressed with the pattern and so ditched that. Then I thought I might try a different German pattern, Honeybee Socks. However, I started the toe and watched the colors mingle and play around and realized that an overly involved pattern would not work with such variegated yarn. (Which is fine by me! I love variegated yarns. The more fun colors the better!) I remembered a pattern I’ve always wanted to try: Firestarter. Definitely a pattern written for variegated yarn. So I tried not to finish the toe until break, and at break I ran down to the media center to look up the pattern and hastily write it down.

And that, you see, is the story of this work in progress. I think this is the Witchy colorway; probably why it appeals to me as much as it does. I really dislike starting new socks in places where I want to know the pattern already, but I think it worked out, and any mistakes I made can be ironed out later. I am really enjoying knitting this sock though! I’m very grateful I got the chance to try it out. :)

While I was taking photos for this, I realized there was something else at the bottom of the envelope the yarn came in:

A couple of cute little pins to put on my school bag. Well, I don’t think Phoe thought of that exactly, but my bag does need them. Good timing!