I am a total sock slut. Sock monogamy? What’s that? No, I may have three pairs of socks on the needles (actually, only two - I put one on scrap yarn to free up some needles… I’m bad), but of course I started a new pair this weekend. I think Wendy said it best in her most recent post over at Knit and Tonic:

Honestly. I’m convinced that half the knitting thing is in the dreaming and if you don’t do a bit of dreaming and aching or whatever it is that you do when you spot a pattern or a skein, a hank, or a ball, then all you have on your hands is a bit of wool and a couple of needles.

If all it were, were a bit of wool and a couple of needles, well, I don’t know what I would do.

The three remaining yarns I had pulled out when I was trying to decide which to use for the next pair of Aurelia Socks were still sitting out in the living room, and the Fleece Artist kept calling to me. I wanted to knit it so badly. The three other socks I’m working on, despite their UFO WIP status, are are sort of “been there, done that.” I’ll get to them eventually, I’m sure. But I really really wanted to try the Fleece Artist. So I flipped through my stitch pattern books, found one I liked, and threw together a quick design. Nothing terribly fancy. Just a lace stitch. It’s a bit mottled, but it looks better when it’s stretched out on the leg.

My newest pair of socks (yet unnamed) in Fleece Artist Nova Sock

And so then my pile of yarn in the living room was down to two. The Koigus - dark and light blue variegateds. I had initially planned on using the dark blue for my Sockapalooza pal’s socks, but I kept seeing the two colors next to each other, and the more I looked at them, the more I liked them together. So I decided to try out a new technique - a mosaic pattern.

Koigu KPPPM 404L and 818 for my Sockapalooza pal’s mosaic socks

I’ve never done colorwork before, short of striping, so this’ll be interesting. The stitch pattern I’m looking at is similar to something I’d like to do, but it’s going to take some altering to make it work for socks. I’m a bit nervous about totally screwing it up, because like I said, I’ve never done any colorwork before. But it’s a slip-stitch pattern, so it’s not like it’s as difficult as fair isle… So, we’ll see.

I probably won’t get to it right away, though. Lord knows I’ve got plenty of other things I need to be working on in the meantime. My SP10 pal’s gloves, for example. Those have to be mailed out quite a bit sooner than my Sockapalooza pal’s socks. And the guilt of having so many WIPs is beginning to wear me down a bit. So, first I need to finish up some loose ends, and then I can get started on these mosaic socks.

In other news, I heard back from the Bridget, the girl who’s living with my former host family in Japan. We’ve exchanged a few emails, and it’s really interesting hearing her stories. It’s a little eerie how similar our experiences are. And you want more eerie? It turns out she’s reading my favorite book of all time, Haruki Murakami’s The Windup Bird Chronicle, right now. As we speak. It’s really kind of a small world, isn’t it?