The Sock Project

This picture is apropos of nothing, but it is one of my favorite shots of the flock. They were watching us play with the llamas, and obviously it was pretty entertaining to them.

My friend Shelda and I have an aptitude for getting into trouble together.

Specifically, we have a tendency to egg each other on when it comes to our knitting. She'll send me a link to a fabulous new lace pattern.....I'll dangle some pretty new sock yarn under her nose...long, detailed conversations are held about technical minutia that no one else cares about....one brings a book that the other then must have...that sort of thing. Once upon a time she was my knitting guru. I was quite pleased to find out recently that there is at least one knitting thing I'm a tad better at. (That would be seaming, in case you are curious!)

A few months ago we had a rather interesting exchange at our monthly Knitting Study Group for our guild. As is very typical, socks were being discussed.

"I only knit plain socks." I said.

"That's not true." She replied, backing it up with a list of the fancy socks she remembers me making.

I laughed, because she was right, and then pointed out that I had a rather serious collection of sock books for someone who never uses any of them. Go figure.

Fast forward a few days to the birth of an idea. Why don't we do our very own sock project - similar to the Yarn Harlot's self-imposed sock club? We could use it as a way to finally knit all of those beautiful socks that we want to knit. I will not bore you with the back and forth that we went through after that, developing our idea and considering our options. I will say that it involved two meetings at Starbucks - always a necessity for birthing a great plan.

And so, I am quite happy to present to you the rules (for me) of our crazy sock plan. (Shelda's rules are similar, but tweaked a tiny bit for her knitting wishes.)

1. We are to each knit one pair of socks/month for the next 13 months (to the best of our abilities), with Dec 1, 2010 as our official start date.
2. NO BASIC/PLAIN/VANILLA Socks
3. Use as many resources/books as possible. (too easy to do a bunch of socks from our one or two favorite books)
4. At least half of the yarn must come from my existing stash. Preferably most.
5. Email by the 7th of the month to let each other know what pattern and yarn we are doing that month.
6. Meet at the end of the month to show off/celebrate/plan for the next pair!

I'll be introducing you to my first pair next week!