Sick in the Head

I have a head cold. It hit me almost immediately after finishing preperations for Thanksgiving. I cook for my husband and my three brothers every year because my parents spend Thanksgiving in Florida and bestow their wonderful culinary expertise on my two other brothers living there. That's fine; we get them for Christmas.

But besides being a little run down while preparing the food, I didn't think anything was wrong with me until I had finished bringing the dishes to the table. After eating, I was ready for a nap. I figured this was customary, and didn't think anything of it, until I woke up and felt the burn of post-nasal drip. Blech.

After that, I knew it was over. The rest of my weekend would be devoted to resting and trying to get rid of the cold. I wasn't going to be able to go to the gym (which I sorely needed to do), no shopping (which I wasn't too broken up over), and no major projects for organizing my house (which I like to do in preparation for the holidays).

I was even too sick to knit. That's right - I could hardly believe it myself.

So after some power napping and major tea drinking, eventually I was able to knit and got back to my socks. Sock #1 came out brilliantly, if I don't say so myself:




The colors are vibrant, the stripes are bold and defined, and the sock is a nice solid sock (construction wise). I do love making socks...

Now, the second one is decidedly less vibrant:




So far, the colors have been much darker and even some of the stripes are becoming less defined. In fact, since these photos were taken, I've progressed onto the heel and am almost finished with it. It is a darker sock compared to its vibrant pink partner. I'm not sure if they work together. We'll have to see how they compare when they are both done. Right now, side by side, they sorta' look like this:



I'm not quite sure what happened. Originally, I wanted to break up the skein into four separate balls so I could make two socks at once. When I paired up the balls of yarn to contrast with each other, I may have inadvertantly paired them incorrectly, so that the shades of color ended up matching in two of the four (if any of that makes sense). In the end, I've got the pinks and reds in one sock and the grays and purples in another. It might have been nicer to have more of a mixture in both. However, even though I had intended on making two socks at a time, I didn't get to because I realized that I didn't have a spare set of #2 double-pointed needles. If I had been making the second sock while making the first, I could have adjusted the colors. Oh well, next time. I have another skein ready for experimentation. We'll see if I have time, since this is supposed to be a gift.

If I find time, I might make another pair and be more careful about pairing up the colors. But when I look at the pair I have now, I think they can still work together in a sort of yin/yang sort of way. We'll see when they are both finished.

That's what it's like to manually stripe Noro yarns. To quote an overly quoted movie: it's "like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're gonna' get."