I’m pleased to say that I’ve moved on from feeling heartbroken about not being in school this semester. The time I spent attending class and doing assignments has been replaced with some wonderful things! One of those wonderful things is that I have more time for my knitting. Case in point — these socks were lingering on my needles since last year. When I had a break from my studies, the idea of making tiny stitches on size 0 needles and thinking about heel turning, gussets, and all of the other mechanics of sock knitting was not the appealing thing. But now that my time and mind is much freer — it’s exactly the thing! My mind likes to figure out knitting stuff just as much as rhetoric stuff.
I really like the way these socks are the same but different — when you start a sock with self striping yarn, you can choose to start with the same colors for each sock, or you could take a chance and see how starting with different colors will play out. That’s what I chose. See how the heels are the same but different?
That fills me with glee! These socks are going to be so fun to wear. I used a pattern from Nancy Bush’s book Knitting Vintage Socks (my favorite because she is a friend of the tiny needles too, plus her patterns are always clear and perfect). The yarn is Kaffe Fassett sock yarn (of course — those colors!). I had the yarn, so no coupons used.
I think “same but different” might be a little mantra of mine in the coming months. I’m wondering if I should go back to school at all now. I did some math, and finishing a graduate degree will cost $10,000 even after my tuition reimbursements at work. I have already learned a great deal about writing and research that I can take to my own projects. Instead of writing articles for academic journals, I can make my own little books. Instead of shooting videos to include in multimedia projects, I can make them about how to bake bread. You get the idea — same, but different. And I think that difference is really, really exciting.