Meet Lucy. She’s my 14-year-old Honda Civic - the only car I’ve ever owned - and she’s sick.

But first, a little back-story. Back in July 1997, just before my 16th birthday, my dad and I took a road trip. My grandma was giving me her car - a 1993 red Honda Civic with practically no miles on it - for my birthday. So Dad and I flew out to Phoenix to pick it up, and then made the 1600-mile drive back to Huntsville over the next three days, stopping in a multitude of towns, such as Roswell and Memphis, to do some sight-seeing along the way. (It was the night after we got back home that one of my tires blew and we learned that there was no tire iron in the car, something that could have been disastrous if it had happened while we were on one of those long stretches of highway in New Mexico or Texas, but that’s another story.)

You see, Lucy is the only car I’ve ever had. And aside from a few small problems here and there, she’s been a very good car to me. So it breaks my heart that she’s having problems right now. I love her, but she’s been having problems lately with overheating, and the latest diagnosis seems to be a cracked head gasket (which has happened before a few years ago). It’s probably going to cost somewhere in the $1000 range to repair, and that’s $1000 I don’t have right now, being between jobs and all. Somewhere, Murphy is laughing his ass of at me.

It breaks my heart to think of giving her up and getting a new car, which I may have to do once I’ve got a job and some savings built up again. She only has 146,000 miles on her, though, so I’m hoping that if I can manage to scrape up together enough money and get this work done (wanna help me out and buy some sock yarn?), she’ll last me at least another year or two. Still… saying goodbye to her is going to be hard, no matter when it happens.

But you guys don’t come here to read about cars. You come here to read about knitting and fibery stuff. So… I’ll oblige and share some pictures of my newest sock.

The yet un-named sock in my hand-dyed Mixed Berries

I really love both this pattern and this yarn colorway. I wish I had dyed more than 2 oz. of it, because I’d like these socks to be taller - the pattern is just too pretty to be so short. However, I’d really like to perfect the pattern and share it with you guys, so I’ll be making another pair out of it, this time quite a bit taller.

The sock is composed of several panels - a wide lacey panel running up the front and back of the sock, with a set of curvy fake-cable panels on either side and a twisty bar between them that runs down the instep.

An open lace pattern runs down the front of the sock, anchored by fake cables

I also knit the heel flap so that the fake cables continued down to the heel, but to make it sturdier, I didn’t continue the lace panel all the way down, opting instead for a more standard slip stitch pattern for that section.

Fake cables run down the back onto the heel flap

Overall, I’m very, very happy with this sock, and I can’t wait to get a pattern written up to share with you guys.