Busy bees

Spring is here. Our azaleas have bloomed and gone. Seeds have been planted in the garden. Carpenter bees are buzzing. We battle those every year trying to prevent them from drilling new holes into our house. I've been buzzing around knitting a lot of socks.

I've been in a lace sock mood. It started with the sock that I designed for The Loopy Ewe's April club. The yarn is madelinetosh's Tosh sock in Midnight Rendevous. It's a very dark purple--almost black, but not. I tried my usual cables or twisted stitches, but this yarn wanted to be lace. Plus it was an April pattern. Lace is more appropriate for this time of year. The center portion of my pattern, Rubus, reminds me of blackberries. I know it's not the season for them, but with spring comes thoughts of berry picking. The side/secondary part of this pattern reminds me of vines.

My other lace socks were done with a desire to have a few patterns with smaller charts. I was in the middle of designing other things that can't be shown and sample knitting. I needed sock patterns that I could work in between those. These are all easy to put down and figure out where you left them when you work on them again.

There was a knit-a-long in the String Theory group on ravelry. My goal was to knit all of last year's sock club colors and I squeaked in and finished. I also won some yummy smelling perfumes in a random drawing from the finishers list. That opened up a whole new world of shopping. ;-)

As of March 30, I have completed the 52 Pair Plunge IV. Yay!! That link goes to my project page that lists all of my completed socks between June 1, 2010 and May 31, 2011. I'll continue to list socks there until the deadline to see how many I do finish. And since I don't see my designing, sample knitting, or my kids feet will stop growing any time soon, I've signed up for the 52 Pair Plunge V for next year. The next challenge starts July 1.