Sock Swatching is for the Weak

As is buying full price sock yarn. Check out my bargainous Fortissima Socka that I got in Berlin for half nothing:



I count five ends. Five! Is this normal for sale yarn? Fretful little fragments at the beginning? But I battled my way past the mess, and cast on for a short-row tow (first ever!) and battled round the yarn-overs and up to the join, three times (it's all education, folks), and finally got to the falling leaves pattern:


to find that it was no use remaining in denial: not only did the sock look unpleasantly like a dead fish's head, but it was a monster, baggy, enormous sock. And this in a pattern that is "deliberately on the small side"! Gah. Time for the rip.

Look, here's a more cheerful thought: an old old FO which lazy me only just got around to putting in the post.



It's a Dream Swatch, knit in a fancy viscose-cotton-glittery-very-very-silly yarn (possibly by Filati, but at this stage I actually couldn't swear. What am I? A fool.) The idea is that you can headscarf it or neckscarf it... or look at it in bewilderment, wondering what on earth to do with it. Hush.



Q: Glitz, don't you have a baby dress and a biker jacket about two stitches from completion?

A: Hush. Yes. Some day, the tidy finishing fit will fall upon me, won't it? In the meantime, I am plotting plotting plotting. I have my family Christmas presents all plotted in my head (though not on the needles yet... sure it's not even Hallowe'en), and on Friday I had a genius stroke: last year, in a fit of desire to emulate my knitting friend hfnuala, I bought three balls of Kidsilk Spray for a lace shawl. Summer came and went, the pattern was sworn over, and five lonely rows languished on the needles. On Friday, the revelation struck: since when do I wrap myself in cobwebby fronds of lace? Do I think I am some class of Pre-Raphaelite Miss Haversham? Answer: no, but what I DO need is a drop-dead elegant sleeveless top for the winter party season. Definitely. So now I am on the scour, friends, for a truly glamorous Kidsilk Haze pattern: all suggestions very very welcome indeed.