I am a sucker for a good list: 10 things I’m going to do this week. 3 goals for today. 5 things I’m thankful for. You know the type. So when I see all these diligent knitting bloggers doing their make nines, and their goals for 2021, I feel like a bit of a slacker. I purposely didn’t make goals for knitting, because knitting is the one area in my life where I don’t have to have “goals.” It’s not about achievement. It’s just supposed to be fun and relaxing. But still, the lists call to me.
In particular, I was watching old episodes of the Hand Me My Knitting podcast. If you haven’t had a chance to check out Sam’s podcast, it’s worth a watch. In one of her earliest episodes from 2017, she was talking about how she kitted up 12 skeins of yarn and sock patterns, one for each month, so that at the end of the year she would have 12 pairs of hand knit socks.
I don’t have much of a stash, so I definitely couldn’t bag up 12 skeins, but I love the idea of knitting a pair of socks a month. Except it’s the end of February, and I am the slowest sock knitter ever! I was disappointed that this idea hadn’t occurred to me earlier. I know I could just start now, and do 12 months – or even 9 months, but it just doesn’t seem the same. It wasn’t as neat and tidy as a calendar year-long goal. Why does that matter? My brain works the way it works I suppose.
But then, I remembered that I had started a pair of socks in the summer: the Basic Ribbed Socks by Kate Atherly. And actually, I had knit that pattern earlier and performed sock surgery to repair a huge hole in the foot. What happened to those two pairs of socks? After some digging in my closet, I came up with these:
Basic Ribbed in Less Traveled Yarn 
Basic Ribbed post-surgery in Northern Bee Studio
You guys! These socks are basically done. If I hustle, I could finish both pairs by the end of February and be right on track to do a pair a month for 2021. Better late than never, right?
So, I am knitting the first pair in Less Traveled Yarn’s 757 sock in the colorway Gatsby. I am using hiya hiya US size 1 needles. The second pair is knit in Northern Bee Studio’s Yak Sock in the colorway Shaken. These are on Lykke US size 1.5 needles. The best part is, I could really use some socks, so these could not be finished soon enough.
And for those of you following along at home, I know I’m supposed to be finishing the sleeves on my No Frills pullover, and the cardigan for my daughter. So far I have one kid sleeve done, and I’m down to the cuff on my first No Frills sleeve, so I haven’t forgotten about them.
The only thing I need to worry about at this point, is what lovely socks am I going to cast on in March when I finish these up?
A Yarn Tail 
I chuckled: you brought back a memory from 34 years ago of being young parents invited to dinner by new neighbors after we arrived in California. So kind of them. Afterwards, we two couples got to talking and the wife mentioned that she knits, too–or did, or sort of, but well anyway… And she pulled out the sleeves and half the front of a baby sweater to show me that she’d started for her now-high-school daughter.
I noticed after that how pattern instructions always start with the back, then the front, then the sleeves, and it dawned on me why it is so: had she done the back first, any problems she was embarrassed enough not to want to see but not embarrassed enough to bother to rip out and redo, well, they’d be on the back where you don’t have to look at them. Then the front, now that she’d be getting better at this. Then, if she’s tired of the whole thing, sew it together, call it a vest, and maybe crochet or something (pick up two stitches, cast one off, pick up one, cast off one, continue around the edges) to make them a little more perfect. She would have had something usable for the amount of knitting already done.
I’ve never forgotten it.
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That is hilarious! Fingers crossed that all my mistakes are in the back š
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