Yarnissima, A New Obsession...

I confess, I had been getting tired of sock knitting.

It had nothing to do with the socks, or the knitting, or the yarn, or the act of knitting socks. It was all about the patterns.

I was used to finding patterns via the many great sock books out there, or even from issues of magazines. But lately, I'd noticed that many of them utilize similar lace or cable repeats--basically, I was discovering many new patterns resembled socks I'd already knit. Then, I tried looking online. Using a dial-up internet connection, which is all we can get out here in hell. Indiana. Well, you get the picture.

It didn't work too well. Then, to my joy, I discovered that I had been using the Ravelry search engine all wrong, and that I could search by the highest rated sock patterns.

Behold...



This is La Digitessa and it is glorious. I'm also in the midst of knitting Spina di Pesce. Both designed by Yarnissima, and are awesome, totally different patterns.

They are knit from the toe up, which I had never attempted before, use a short row toe and heel, and are knit on a long circular needle using the magic loop method. All of those are new for me. That, added to the awesome cable designs, makes life awesome. I'm knitting them both out of Jitterbug sock yarn.

Jitterbug is my current favorite sock yarn. It doesn't have the same pooling issues many yarns have and is slightly heavier than many sock yarns. I love this, because it doesn't leave me with a super fine yarn as I knit with my horribly tight gauge.

At first I had a hard time getting gauge, simply because of the whole tight knitting issue, but I worked it out.