I appreciate all of the great input on the last post about ripping. I think I will ultimately finish it, and if I don’t want it perhaps it will become a gift or I’ll sell it to someone for the cost of the yarn. After switching to the Araucania, there was such a difference in the springiness of the yarn. I’m not sure if I really want to rip and knit anything else out of the Solemate after all. I’m only about 12 rows from being finished when I do pick it back up, so that seems like the better option in the long run. The Araucania Ishbel is finished and gorgeous. It has been blocked and I will post pictures soon, along with the finished Featherweight Cardigan. It’s been hard to find a time of the day to take pics with Matt (the fella) when it’s not sweltering and neither of us have other things going on. What I wouldn’t give for a cloudy 75 degree day right about now…

The socks you see above are what I did for most of the weekend. I’m pretty proud that I got about half done while knitting these just a bit on Friday, a good chunk of Saturday, and more on Sunday. I thought about switching to something else on the heel flap, because, as knitters that knit heel flaps may also attest, that goes so much more SLOWLY than any other part of the sock. I refuse to do short row heels, no matter how cute they look, because I just don’t think they would wear as well and I didn’t particularly enjoy them the one time I knit them. Matt says I was able to get so much done because I “have no life” but I wholeheartedly disagree. On Saturday I spent time hanging out (and sometimes knitting at the same time) with four different sets of friends at different times during the day. And I baked lavender cupcakes. So there.

These socks happen to be for Matt. They’re Wendy D. Johnson’s Sneaky Argyle Socks from Toe Up Socks for Every Body. I have two of her toe-up sock books and this is the first I’ve gotten around to making a pattern in one. I don’t make a lot of patterns from books, but I love owning them. Matt wanted black socks. I refused to make them that boring, and cables don’t have a lot of oomph in black socks. He was ecstatic about the argyle option. I added colored toes and heels to the sock to make them more interesting.

If you’re curious about the lavender cupcakes, I used this recipe, added some homemade lavender extract (1 cup vodka and 1 TBS dried lavender flowers in a jar for about a week), added 3 TBS dried lavender flowers to the batter, and used this recipe for the icing, subbing lavender extract and a little lemon extract too. My lavender extract was not nearly strong enough yet, so after I used some, I added 2 TBS more of dried flowers and I’m giving it more time. I’ll get it right eventually. I think they’re pretty good though, because we can’t stop eating them.

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