What I Did on My Winter Vacation

Upstate NY has gotten a lot of snow, as you can see from this picture of my mom's back deck. It's very cold and today we're supposed to get flurries and an inch more of accumulation. Nice if you don't have to travel. And if you need to stay inside and get a lot of knitting done. Which I do. (See below.)

Here's a gratuitous dog picture. All creatures great and small:


So, onto my brother's Christmas socks. The cuff for one is totally finished with the other one trailing closely behind. Should be able to finish the second cuff today. Did I say I'm doing the mistake rib, or broken rib pattern? It's nice because the rows alternate k2, p2 and k: getting those rows of plain knitting is much easier on my hands.



The colors look nice together, I think. And the yarn is really wonderful to work with. A beautiful color. The only thing is. . . the ball is totally effed up. Above, you can see a big wad of tangled yarn from the center. This happened with the other ball as well and after spending -- no joke -- about two hours trying to untangle the mess, I realized that a good length of the yarn had wound around itself so much that it felted together. A total soup sandwich, as some of my people say. So now I'm knitting from the outside of that ball and expect I'll have to do the same with this one. What's going on?? Could it be that I was the one steering the ball winder? I'm hopeless.

By Friday I'd better be well finished with both heel flaps and all instep decreases or, like the balls of yarn, my Christmas plan for my brother will be totally effed as well. Stay tuned.