I have had these socks on the needles since the beginning of December. I was perusing WEBS for some hard-wearing self-striping yarn for another pair of socks for Matt, and I stumbled upon (or went looking, rather) for more yarns for me, since the yarn I found for him was half price. That’s a reason to buy more, right?

This hasty phone pic doesn’t do the colors justice.

I had never knitted with Zauberball Crazy yarn before, but I’ve seen it in a few yarn stores and I’ve been tempted. When you see a whole page of gorgeous colors staring you in the face, it’s really hard not to resist. I got the skein for this pair of socks, and color 1660 (Brown, Green, Blue) as well.

This yarn has long stripe repeats. I intended on trying to make them match up when I wound the skein into two balls, but it seemed like I would have to cut out a large chunk to be able to do so. You can see from the picture that it would have been about 2 inches of knitting lost. The yarn has generous yardage (460 yds), but I just couldn’t bring myself to cut it down.

The socks are fraternal, rather than identical, twins. In a way, this is relieving and allows me to only think about the knitting (or not have to think about the knitting). Sometimes when I get really matchy matchy with the socks, like on this pair, I end up getting a wee bit obsessed about making them match perfectly and I end up thinking about the matching on almost every round, trying to knit a little looser or tighter on one sock to even out the colors. Yeah, I’m a little bit obsessive-compulsive sometimes.

I also decided that these should go to my mom, because I found out over Christmas break that she wore a hole in the heel of the first socks I ever gave her. They were out of some delicious Koigu yarn and had a short row heel. That was my first and last time to use a short row heel. I just don’t believe they will be strong enough. She repaired the socks, but I still felt like she ought to have another pair, so these will be hers. We are both size 9’s, so it’s easy to turn a pair for me into a pair for her. I’m mostly knitting these on the bus or in movie theaters, so it’s a bit slow going, but I’ll make her model them when I finish. That’s my price for gifted socks.