Selfish Knitting

Although I blogged yesterday about all the Christmas knits I'm still working on, it hasn't stopped me from casting on a few things for myself, too. The first thing I cast on was a sock for a dear plurk friend, Yenforyarn. A fellow knitter and designer (not to mention a real life friend of my favorite fiber seller, Coby), Yen has recently been diagnosed with stage 3 ovarian cancer. Across plurk and ravelry, knitters set aside time on Dec 28, the day of Yen's first chemo treatment, and cast on one of her sock designs. I chose to knit her Manhattan pattern, in my own handdyed yarn from the shop. I'd been saving this yarn for a special occasion, and this certainly fit the bill. The yarn, "April Showers," complements the pattern well, I think. I've already finished one sock:



The next sock will have to wait a while to cast on, however, because I'm busy with another selfish knit. It's another sock, this time from Brewer's Knitting Company, and it's a mystery sock. This is my first ever mystery knit (where you have no idea what the FO will look like, and have to wait for days to get each "clue", or knitting section). So far I'm enjoying it. The yarn is a bit thin so it requires size 1 needles which I'm not a big fan of, but so far the pattern is an enjoyable knit. I like that there are only 24-36 rows to knit with each clue. It's a lot easier to avoid knitting boredom that way. Many of the knitters doing this are doing both at a time, but I'm just knitting the one for now. I'm through clue 2, and here's what it looks like:


I finished Tara's thrummed mittens this morning and have updated my last post with pictures. That's what I'm working on. How about you?