Today, I’m linking up with Freshly Pieced, Yours Truly, 3 Four and Under, Free Pretty Things for You, The Trendy Treehouse, Ginger Snap Crafts, Rae Gun Ramblings, My Girlish Whims, Southern Lovely, Clean and Scentsible, Milk and Cuddles, JAQS Studio, Family, Home & Life, The Life of Jennifer Dawn, Uncommon Designs, and Polka Dots on Parade

I finally casted on my second pair of socks for Sockdown September! I just started them last night and I’m making decent progress. I think with this weekend’s little road trip (more on that when we get back) I will finish these babies off. I’m making them as a surprise for a old friend who reads my blog so I’m not telling, other than to say I hope to get these on her feet by the first week of October.

The way Sockdown works is pretty simple really. First of all, if you’re asking WTF, Sockdown is a knit-a-long (KAL) within the Sock Knitters Anonymous group on Ravelry. Essentially, every month a bunch of us try to knit as many pairs of socks that fit under the same guidelines as possible. We post cast on and bind off information and of course all the stuff in between. Every month the guidelines are 1) a set ‘technique’ (though it’s not always technically a technique) like for example socks designed for men or a specific color or cables or something like that. 2) there are a couple of featured designers each month, whose patterns you can knit and NOT follow the technique rule (obviously it’s more fun if you try to find a pattern by the featured designer that uses that month’s technique) aaaaand 3) every other month there is a mystery sock pattern, the mystery being that only one part of the pattern is released at a time as a ‘clue’ and no one really knows what it looks like!

One other rule that I really like is that you actually have two months to finish each months’ socks – as long as they were cast on in the proper month. So for example, as long as I cast on all of my September socks before September 30, I have until October 31 to finish them! At first I thought this might get me trapped in always being a month behind and then never getting a chance to catch up but Sockdowns go from September to September and August is considered a vacation month, you can finish July’s project in time.

Why? Well, other than the fun of a KAL and the public pressure to actually finish my socks in a timely manner, there are prizes! They are drawn for the day after the deadline (so September’s prize will be drawn for on November 1). So fun! Of course the more pairs of socks you finish by each deadline, the more times you are entered in the draw!

The Sockdown challenge for September is just to knit in red. This yarn is Nova Sock Print in 411, I bought it from a cute hobby shop in the woods in Ontario before we left.

Now! Onto my finished socks! These babies, my Zephyr socks, were my first ever Sockdown socks. Knit in a beautiful yarn by Alisha Goes Around, called Panoply of Peacocks Fingering in ‘Parted’. I ordered it from The Loopy Ewe and I seriously recommend them to anyone. They are a wonderful shop! Physically, they are in Fort Collins in Colorado. The next time we are in Colorado I’d love to take a drive up there!

These socks were knitted for my littlest little! I have enough yarn left for plenty of puffs for my blanket too!

I did it!! Look! My sister won like 14, but whatever, I got one!

So with the Ravellenic Games behind me for another two years, the desire to knit my face off is still in full force. Thankfully my life is actually pretty conductive to that, so away I went casting on and finishing a pair of cute baby socks for my girl Sammie. Well, they’re for her baby duh, but that baby isn’t finished cooking yet. That gives me more time to knit other cute things for her!

But those socks are finished, May, where’s your work in progress?! These lovies were cast on shortly before the Games started and I set them aside to work on my puffs. The puffs are habit forming!! After I finished the pink baby socks, I immediately used the rest of the yarn to make puffs (I only got two out of what was left) and these socks are not even done yet and I’m already thinking about the puffs I will make with the leftover yarn. Here are Miss Wee One #3’s almost finished wee socks!

No lie, she is currently wearing the finished one. She wanted to wear the one that’s still on the needles, but eventually decided the one without the pokey things would be just fine for today. Don’t you eat cereal while watching My Little Pony on Netflix with one woolly sock on – in California in August?!

Sidebar: Our cousin’s girlfriend showed me Coursera a little while ago! Have you seen this?

I will be taking Networked Life, Model Thinking and Greek and Roman Mythology this term (they are all 10 weeks long) and then Nutrition for Health Promotion (6 weeks) in January. I’m excited that each of the courses I picked all award a certificate of completion if done well!

I have been knitting a lot more lately, and I even managed to finish sock one and get about 1/4 of the way done sock two on this pair – let’s ignore that it’s been two weeks since my last WIP Wednesday. Homeschooling and visitors and exploring and all that good stuff gets in the way of knitting, you know! Also, I had to rip the first sock back 3 or 4 times after I turned the heel. Total Nightmare. However, this second sock is well on it’s way to being done by next Wednesday so I can finally send it off to the birthday girl (whose birthday was in April)!

Do you love my new knitting basket and the so cute it hurts notebook? I know, right? I go the basket when I was out thrifting with Vanessa and the kids on the weekend (I should do a post on their haul they made it home with, I’m impressed with their choices), and the lovely notebook was a gift from my girl Emerald. She picked it up for me when she was in Hong Kong (ooooh, fancy pants – thanks Em)! The pages are lovely and each section is done in a different color, the best part though is the back cover, it says ‘where troubles melt like lemon drops’. Ha! I love random stuff from Hong Kong (that’s another post I should do soon, she brought back a lot of cool stuff).

Annnnyhoo, I sincerely hope these socks are done by next Wednesday and I’ve casted on for my fifth pair of socks for the year. With a goal of 12 pairs of socks this year, I’m already a pair behind if I want to knit one per month. Maybe I’ll knit a pair of ankle socks in there somewhere!