Sock Hospital: Patient 1 - Alice in Wonderland Nutkins

The year my mom died, 2010, I treated myself to The Socks that Rock Sock Club. I'm glad I did it, but I didn't continue: it was too decadent for a normal year.

This is the beautiful My Wild Irish Girlie and the Nutkins I made with it.

Here are the Nutkins now.

 

They've faded quite a bit and developed multiple holes.

As I pondered what yarn to use to darn these socks, I tried to recall if I had knit a swatch. I thought, even though I really like to keep my swatches as memorabilia, I guess I would be willing to frog them, and use them to mend.

However, as I pawed through the swatch box, look what I discovered: a teeny, tiny, mini skein 😊 I should have placed a penny beside it to give you some context.

I had forgotten all about these! It's almost too cute to use, but I guess that's what it's for, right?!

Ignore that wonky yellowish-white one on the end - I'm tempted to open it and rewind it. 

 

I pronounce these socks healed : )

Progress

I didn't make a spreadsheet. But I did spend some time updating my notebook in Ravelry. It's far from current, but I do feel accomplished.

My current new project is Baktus. This project was not in my queue, but I know that this is a pattern I've been meaning to make for years. I decided on the classic pattern, but I was tempted by the lacy variation. Funnily enough, I was flipping through my old pattern binder, and I saw that I had printed out the lacy Baktus pattern years ago! Maybe I'll still make that one too : )

The main impetus for knitting Baktus was to finally work with my Schoppel-Wolle Zauberball® Crazy! I acquired this yarn from The Sated Sheep in Dripping Springs years ago at the start of a Fredericksburg Oktoberfest weekend. I figured I would make socks, but then I remembered my sock epiphany: Never knit socks with nice, expensive yarn because you will get holes in the soles and you won't darn them and your broken socks will sit in a closet sad and unworn.

So anyway, I searched around Ravelry for beautiful projects made with Zauberball Crazy, and I found many beautiful Bakti. This is a great pattern: it's easily memorizable, so it makes for carefree, TV-watching knitting. I'm also able to utilize the remainder of my Zealana Luxuria AIR Laceweight: I love this yarn (subject for another entry). It's lightweight but strong and knits up beautifully. I like alternating the two yarns to break up the color changes that occur in the Zauberball.

I'm not loving the left side edge: it's not smooth. That's probably my fault for pairing a laceweight yarn with a fingering yarn. It will be fine in the end: I will be the only one that notices a detail like that.  I'm excited about this very light blue portion of the yarn that was not visible before now.

I'm still going to alternate this new project with finishing old projects. I think I'm *this* close to darning an injured sock.