Embracing chaos

I'm a little on the anal retentive side. My books are alphabetized by author within strict subject areas. I love making lists. I fold my underpants and stack them neatly by type (everyday cotton, special occasion, cute but horribly uncomfortable, etc). I like tidy stripes. I do not do well with variegated sock yarn.

So why am I knitting this?



The sunshine yarns sock has been reincarnated. Its original 64 stitches have been bumped up to 84 to accomodate my ridiculously tiny gauge. And I'm Jaywalking. Again. With rather more success than in prior attempts.

This might be the holy grail of sock patterns. Easy enough to knit on the train, but with enough variety to keep me interested. And I'm working very hard on embracing the randomness. I remind myself that these socks will truly be a one-of-a-kind item. And the colors really are fabulous. The colorway is called daffodil, and the name is spot-on. And color in nature is chaotic, but still beautiful, right? It's completely ok not to have tidy stripes.

And if I repeat that to myself enough times, I'm sure I'll finally believe it.

On the non-sock front, there are finished objects in the house:



The hat is made from Sheep Shop yarn, inspired by the hats in Last Minute Knitted Gifts. I'm not sure I love the garter brim, but I do love the yarn itself.

The wristwarmers are from the same book, and took most of a skein of spendy Noro Cash Iroha that I purchased in a moment of weakness. Fall weather seems to have arrived, so they had their debut this week. I don't really see the point of gloves that don't keep your fingers warm, but they do look damn fine poking out of a corduroy jacket. Damn fine.

That Noro is really gorgeous yarn - soft and warm, with a slight sheen from the silk. I've been eying the Hourglass Sweater in LMKG too, and this is the yarn the pattern calls for. But by my calculation, it would cost $156 to buy enough to make the sweater in my size.

I'm trying something new and strange called "saving money", so that's exactly $156 more than I'm allowed to spend on yarn this month. Sigh.