I’m calling them my Dark Side of the Moon socks. Since I started them in the car on the way home last weekend, I had no access to a sock pattern book or a book of knitting stitches – nothing. So I started them out with a little 4x2 ribbing. Four knits, two purls, four knits, two purls and so forth. But when it came time to start the cuff, I realized that if I repeated that pattern on the back side I would have eight stockinette stitches on either side. Nothing really wrong with that. But I thought I would play with it a little, in a limited fashion. 
So on the back side of these socks the rib pattern flips. It’s now four purls, two knits, four purls, two knits, etc. Oooh, ridgey. So, why Dark Side of the Moon? Well, the sock yarn is called Galaxy, so I was thinking of space-related names. And since the interesting thing about these is that the back is unexpectedly different from the front, though not seen as often, and since they have a lot of high relief going one, as the moon has craters…well, the name just seemed appropriate.
They aren’t hugely imaginative. I was thinking, as I knit away on this one, that I should have made the panels of eight knit stitches up each side and then done something interesting in those panels…a cable or some knit/purl design. Or arranged the ribs so that a wide panel ran up the back of the leg and put a cable or something there. Or put little cable twists at the top of each of the stockinette ribs. Oh well, maybe next time. I think we can rest assured that these won’t be the last socks I ever knit. (I counted them up...I've knit myself 16 pairs of socks so far. Well, 16 and a half. Woot!)
(See how much I love you? It's like a sauna here in Baltimore...hot and horribly humid...and I'm sitting outside wearing my wool socks so I can take pictures of them!)
But this is why I’m clever. In those first two shots you can see what I made this weekend. I typed up basic, basic instructions for simple toe-up socks (Thank you, Wendy Johnson, since I grabbed these from her sock books!) and had them laminated at Kinko’s this weekend so I can pop it into my knitting bag and have it at my fingertips. I had these written out on index cards but they wear out and tear…this will be permanent.
In other news...early this spring Mr. Pointy Sticks and I went over to Valley View (a big garden center not too far from us) and bought some new day lilies. Mr. Pointy Sticks is very fond of yellow lilies, so we carefully looked through all the pots and picked out two pretty yellow ones, one bright and one a softer yellow.
Well, they're in bloom!
This is what they look like:
Not yellow!
Also not yellow!!
Sorry that they look sort of ratty...it's been not only very hot, but very dry for over a week now. I think they're a little tired.
I’ll have to do a book write-up soon. I’ve read some good’uns over the past week or two.
* Gratuitous Peter Pan reference.
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