Although I was late to the party signing up for Mystery Stole 3, I have managed to catch up. Of course, there is no rule that stays you have to keep up with the clues but it seems kind of fun to do it that way. I’m loving the yarn and the pattern is very pretty.

I also cast on for my second pair of socks for SOS…I really expected to be cranking out the socks in honor of this event, but other things keep intervening. When my sisters were here last week, I learned that Sheila is perpetually cold. How could I have such a great subject to knit for and not know it??!! Apparently she wears socks to bed every night, I had one ball of this yarn in my stash, her nickname is Pinkie and her birthday is July 28th. All the signs pointed to this yarn and Breeze (I think I can safely talk about this since I don’t think Sheila reads the blog.  But if you are and you didn’t think I was really giving you vitamins for your birthday, did you? ).

Yarn: Classic Yarns Cashsoft 4 ply 57% extra fine merino, 33% microfibre, 10% cashmere Needles: US 1 It’s been a long time since I’ve done top down socks. I really don’t mind though…it is kind of nice to shake it up for a change. I wasn’t wild though about having to break the yarn after the cuff. I’ll stay consistent on the next one but if I ever make another pair I’d probably just rearrange the stitches so I don’t have to do that. I also found that although the stitch gauge is about right the row gauge is not. Fortunately, the designer gave the measurement for the heel flap length so I did 20 rows instead of the 34 rows called for in the pattern. I still picked up the same amount of gusset stitches doing two in each slipped stitch towards the sock top and one each in the last 4 stitches near the bottom (making sure I have a note for myself so I do it the same on the next one).  I think these are going to be super cute and after the try on I just did they should fit pretty well too!

Edited to add:  Could some kind person out there please let me know if my new posts are showing up on bloglines?  It seems like since I messed with the feed to block the running posts that bloglines isn’t picking up the feed right…it use to be much more immediate.