Sock Show Thursday: An Even Dozen (Not Bakers)

When we reached December I was feeling ahead, easy going. Sure there was only 31 days left in the year and I had a full pair of socks still to knit if I was going to reach that dozen, but hey, I've knit socks in a couple of days. A couple of days where I did essentially nothing else, grant you, but still, it was possible.

Unless, of course, you need to ship them as a gift and they suddenly need to be done FAR sooner than the end of the month. 

Thank heavens for BMFA... 

This yarn is the Tea and Alchemy Colorway, which I bought earlier this year with the Philosopher in mind.  He bravely sacrificed this skein as a gift with the strong suggestion that another skein in the same colorway perhaps could be purchased for him.  It was touch and go while I figured out whether or not I could still buy the colorway. If I hadn't been able to, all bets might have been off.  

[Does anyone else have people in their lives who claim yarn as it comes in, even if they don't knit themselves and know it's going to be 2 years before one gets to it?]

The socks are most basic: 1.5 (2.5mm) needles, 64 stitches, knit as quickly as possible. 

It helped that last week I went down to Purdue with BrineyDeep to spend a day working with our third research partner. BD drove, I knit.  We all three schemed and planned, I knit.  We drove back in the dark, I turned the heel by the light of the passenger seat overhead flap.

While I still plan to knit another dozen pair next year, a part of me wonders if I will. I've been increasingly tempted by hats and mittens of late, thrilled by smaller projects or ones that use heavier weight yarn where I can knit them up at a much faster rate.  Such is not to suggest a moratorium on socks, heaven forfend. But perhaps not the same target, maybe only 6 pair?

I say that now...Spring is already looking to be absolutely crazy, I may only have brain power for socks.

Or maybe a stockinette sweater...