Turkish cast on*, I am so sorry for having neglected you in the past. Purly and Anna both mentioned your greatness in entries past. You just looked rather complicated, and I was busy running. Had I known you were such a superior knitting technique, I certainly would not have delayed in learning your secrets. Because you produce such. nice. toes. I may be unable to go back to regular toe knitting.

I planned two new pairs of socks. and dyed up some sock yarn. I couldn't decide what colors to dye this yarn, so in an ultimately quite nerdy move, I dyed them Christmas colors.

The red is destined to be a pair of Elfine socks, which I hope will look pointsetta-ish. The green is going to be Cascading Leaves socks (pattern available by joining the ).

The beauty of this plan is that apart the socks don't connote Christmas necessarily, but together they do. What can I say... the Christmas season is known to provoke seasonal knitting. At least I kept the red and green in separate skeins.

Kool aid recipes:

Red: 5 packets Flavoraid Cherry, 4 Kool-aid Black Cherry, 5 Kool-aid Grape Illusion, 1 Kool-aid orange, 5 Kool-aid Cherry, 1 Kool-aid Wild Watermelon Kiwi (green). This was a way saturated solution, and the yarn did not absorb all the color.

Green: like 11 packets green (some Flavoraid, some Kool-aid), 1 Kool-aid Grape. This was all the green I had on hand. I was taking no chances with muted green. The yarn pretty much absorbed all the color.

* the Turkish cast on method can be found in the Fall 2005 Vogue Knitting, or on this internet tutorial. I followed the directions from Vogue, and found that this can indeed be used with magic loop. This makes me happy because using two circs for one sock just seems excessive.

Mom, if you are reading, now is the time to stop. Also, if you a member of my family who I will see tomorrow, no clicking below!!

By the time I finish this entry, they'll probably be done. I'm working on the toe of the second sock right now.

I started these way back before Christmas, planning two pairs of socks, one red and one green. The red elfine socks are finished and now belong to my aunt.

These green ones had a cast-on and about 3 inches done until I picked them up again about a week ago. and now look! nearly done! amazing.

First and foremost, I am happy to report the successful completion of the cascading leaves socks.

The specs:
Pattern: by Jean Townsend
Yarn: dyed sock yarn from Knitpicks
Needles: size one, magic loop.

Modifications:
I did ten repeats on the cuff instead of five. Also, I think if you follow the pattern as written, the top ribbing and lace pattern don't match up. The top ribbing is a stitch or so off. On the sock on the left, I moved the start of the round so the purl stitches in the lace pattern matched up with purls from the 2x2 rib at the top.

and, because you just can't stop the sock knitting, I started two new pairs. The Chalet Socks from , and the Gentleman's Fancy Sock from . You all know this already, but I must say again, Nancy Bush writes great sock patterns.