Not Really Too Soon, But Definitely Sooner Than I Thought

I am a major over-estimator of how long things will take me to accomplish (for small things--big things I grossly underestimate). Last week I was thinking of how soon Christmas will be upon us, and that I'd better get started knitting with the Christmas sock yarn I had bought.

When I saw this yarn in the 'Holidays' colorway last year, I could not find it anywhere--it must have flown off of the shelves. This year I thought I might find an odd ball or two online, left over and unloved. Would you believe I found this on Amazon of all places?

I decided to make these from the toe up. TU socks appeal to my desire to not have much in the way of yarn remnants as I can just go and go until I'm almost out. However, I find that TU socks just do not fit me in the way that I like. There's a bit of snugness in certain parts that I don't love. I'm going to stick with the cuff-down pattern that seems to work for me (based on the Winwick Mum sock-along).

I tried very hard to make these fraternal twin socks (as one of you lovely folks called them in a comment) and thought I had succeeded based on the toes. But take another look.

I don't know how I did it, but I've obviously got mad skills to have made socks that start off different and end up identical.

I love these self-striping, self-fair-isling yarns. I wish someone would dye them in red and white, or blue and white, so that they'd look Scandinavian, but I'll take what I can get.

I did have a teeny hiccup on the heel flap, it looks like--I must have stitched instead of slipped. And not once, but twice. I enjoy this part cuff-down so much more--you pick up and knit the stitches and I feel like a knitting rock star when I do it. This way it just happens and I can't figure it out, so I feel more dumb-lucky instead of awesome, haha.

As I cannot begin toe-up socks fewer than three times before I stop messing up, I thought I'd be weaving in ends much closer to Christmas, instead of under two weeks. But I love having these to look forward to, as they're so perfectly Christmas-sweater-for-your-feet.

It's probably good that these are done, because this book was delivered today, and it's so beautifully filled with patterns, prose, and pictures that I can feel an obsession coming on.

I'm actually going to a knitting workshop on Thursday taught by these two fellas--I'm hoping they'll let me take some pictures to share!