These are one of the three pairs of socks I was working on when my back went out just over a year ago, thanks to a drunk driver rear-ending me two years prior to that (actually, he rear-ended the car behind me — he hit three cars in total that night). For a while, I couldn't knit at all, although I did find I could crochet whilst lying down. If you scan back through my blog posts, you'll see that I have been making a certain amount of stuff since I've gone into spinal maintenance mode. There were a lot of things lying around half-done though, these socks included.
I know they're just socks, but it feels so good to have this pair off the needles. For one thing, the needles I was using for them were my favourite set — the grandmother who taught me how to knit gave them to me when I was in high school, and I use them for almost every pair of socks I make. For another, the pattern is a lace-and-cables super-complex thing from Cookie A's Sock Innovations book. I love Cookie A's designs, but I have the earlier edition of the book that only has everything in small sizes, so I had to do some extra work to make a version that would actually fit me.
Finishing these socks made me more aware of just how much stuff is lying around on the needles in my apartment. Some of it I started but set aside because it was wool and the Toronto summer squelched down on us like a sponge soaked in boiling water. Some of it got put away before I had friends over and then wasn't dug out again after they left. Some of it isn't very portable, or needs a lot of attention paid to a pattern chart. Some of it got set aside while I made a gift for someone, and then I never found my way back to it.
So I'm going to start a Project, with a capital P. Yesterday was the first day of the second half of 2012. My goal is to have all the stuff I'm going to list finished by New Year's Eve.
As I wrote those last two sentences, I thought of two more things I need to photograph and add to the list. Julie Powell ain't got nothing on me in the nutty deadline department.