And they're done...

Purple!


Standing on the old concrete driveway...yes, there's a right & a left sock.

They will be worn today, so my feet can "set" them to my shape even more than the knitting itself did, and then I'll wash them tomorrow and they'll go into the normal rotation.

This is the 44th or 45th pair I've completed since I started, the 8th pair (7 for me, one for a friend) this year (plus of course the 7 pairs of short socks.)  At the moment (I just counted) I have 22 pairs of "regular" socks--these crew socks.   However, at least three pair are quite worn (knit the first year, or early in the second, heavily worn because of the short rotation), and likely to fail soon.  The plan for the rest of the year includes finishing the Walnut Heather socks (previous posts) for my friend, and then two more pairs for me, one turquoise and one Herdwick.  With luck, the oldest, most worn pairs won't give up until I've knit their replacements.  Then next year I will need to knit 7 pairs minimum to bring the rotation to a full four-week one (every additional week in the rotation adds approximately two years of sock-life to a sock starting in that rotation and extends the life of socks that started in a shorter one.)  I have only two turquoise pairs, so turquoise will be the next color up.  I'll also do a Herdwick, to bring that up to three--I wear them only in the coldest weather here, but two is not enough.  They take longer to dry.

There's plenty to do to keep the needles warm for someone who wants handknit socks on her feet the rest of her life, but recognizes that eyesight may fail before that.  So it's knit'em up now, to get ahead and have either a very long rotation (long enough to reach the end) or a big backlog.  Rotating them is better for the socks.

There is a problem on the bottom of the left sock, which I probably made because I was sick, and was picking up a sock to work on whenever I could, since I couldn't sit up long enough to do anything worthwhile on the computer.  It makes me feel useful, but it also leads to errors.  In this case, the next day I thought of a clever way to fix the mistake (you see this coming, right) and made things *worse*.   And then tried to fix that, while still sick.  Sort of fixed it.  Not perfectly fixed it.  So there's reinforcement to be done on that sock, but it won't matter that I finished it or that I wear it today.  Really.  Trust me.  I have seen worse bottoms-of-socks coming off my needles and fixed them enough to be wearable for quite awhile.  No, I'm not going to show you.