and so there were socks

I jumped headfirst into my yarn stash, looked at my box of sock yarn and my pile of patterns and finally came up with these. The pattern is Nutkin and I call them Suncream socks because ... don't the colors remind you of sunscreen bottles? I remember, in our old bathroom on the top of the wooden shelf that held all my dad's toiletries, there was a collection of sunscreen bottles. Like these (only older):

 The socks look like these bottles. Very 70s. Very nostalgic. What - no fashionable mood board with ... I don't know, oranges and pictures of the ocean and ... coconut palm tree trunks? Or ... who knows, an old coffee ad? Nope, the dust-covered sunscreen bottles that I saw almost every morning and every evening for about 20 years or so, those made me want to knit with this yarn.


I modified the pattern a little, because the cuff had all sorts of instructions (stockinette, purl line, fold over, knit together with provisional cast-on ... too much work) and I decided to do Japanese shortrows for the heel (a waste of time for sock heels, sadly), but on the whole, the pattern is simple and easy, just what I wanted. The second sock is done already, too (well, it *has* been two weeks since my last post).

It's getting far too hot to knit with wool in Vienna, though. I'm thinking about starting a cotton shawl (because I don't have enough stuff on the needles, nooooo), but I don't know which pattern I should use. The yarn is pink and I'd love to do something cherry blossom-themed (since I'm such a Japanophile), but it is dang hard to replicate sakura in knitting.

I'd also like to finish my Rose-colored Edges Shawl (the grey blob on the right), but recently I decided that the pink yarn for the edges was too good to be just an edge. Now what? Well ... Lana Grossa supposedly is bringing out a lace yarn, so I'll have to visit my favorite yarnstore very soon.

Meanwhile, it's back to the country with me for the weekend ... more cleaning.