Small Town Hermit

By the time I had finished the knitting for Soctober, Day 3, it was really too dark to take pictures. Who ordered full dark by 6:30 p.m.? I know, I know. It’s only going to get worse, especially after the clock change in November.

The irony, however, is that it is even more gray and rainy today than yesterday, so photography conditions aren’t much improved. Working with what I’ve got, I present progress from yesterday.

Day 3’s color is Empusa. I had to go look up who she is in mythology, and I invite you to do the same if you don’t know who she is. (I should have mentioned at the beginning that the theme of this “advent” box is Greek mythology, but the color names may have already tipped you off.)

I continued the striping sequence and decided to go ahead and use Empusa for the heel rather than waiting for today’s color (which I think is a good plan because, spoiler alert, there isn’t much contrast between the colors for day three and day four). On the second sock I ran out of Medusa one round short of finishing a stripe, but I found a reasonable supplement in my stash — so reasonable, in fact, that you can’t even see the difference.

There is enough Empusa left for one more stripe after I introduce the color for day four, so today’s decision will be whether to finish this pair as ankle socks or wait and see what day five brings. At the moment I am leaning toward ankle socks. (I know. There’s that suspense again.)

Meanwhile, in sweater news, I do have a yarn option which might work for ghosts, but I have this marvelous orange yarn I really want to use, and it is more suited to leaves than ghosts. The leaf option also gives me the opportunity to use some yarn which was purchases for a different project which is never going to happen. I knit a swatch which looks promising. I like the fabric, and I think that the gauge will be close enough. Yardage might be a bit of an issue. Based on the pattern’s numbers, I don’t have enough. Based on my personal sweater knitting experience, I should have enough. I may have to get creative with color usage, but I accept the yarn chicken challenge.

Oh, and I might actually tackle two sweaters. The second one is Witchling from Dragon Hoad Designs (the dyer of the “advent” sets also designs patterns which I love). It’s another yarn chicken challenge based on the numbers on the pattern, but (a) I think I see a part of the pattern which I would make shorter than called for and (b) I found a supplemental skein. Patterns are just guidelines, right? Right.

I’ll be back later to report on Socktober, Day 4.