Bittersweet Symphony
My two kiddos are headed off to college, a bittersweet time for this soon to be empty-nester-mom. So proud of all that they have done and all of their accomplishments. They are both such wonderful young people who are kind and caring. I’m so happy for them but I’m going to miss them dearly.
So, as the summer has progressed, I’ve spent some time these past weeks knitting for my children. Nothing much at the moment; I’m trying to spend as much time as I can with these two in between their own busy schedules of my son’s job, my daughter’s ballet classes, their social schedules and this summer’s family vacations.
I pulled a few skeins of sock yarn out of my stash and asked my daughter what she would like me to use. She chose this:
It’s Fibernymph Dyeworks Bounce (400 yards) in the Tardis colorway. This yarn took some time to acquire; when it is available it sells out extremely quickly. Once I think I had a skein in the cart and by the time I was checking out it was gone! But I was able to get two skeins so this was a perfect selection…I’d knit a pair of socks for my daughter and my son.
Four Hundred Yards easily makes a pair of socks for my daughter. In fact, these turned out a little big.
For my 6 foot tall son, this amount of yarn is a bit of a challenge; especially since I want to make the leg long enough for him to wear with his LL Bean boots over the winter. My solution – knit the heel and toe in black.
I knit an afterthought heel on my daughter’s pair; for my son’s, I’m knitting the fish lips kiss heel. I love the afterthought heel especially for maintaining the stripe pattern. I love the fish lips kiss heel because this method just produces a really nice heel – I’ll post photos of my son’s pair after I’ve blocked them. As you can see in the photo above, I haven’t grafted the socks together yet – I’m waiting to be sure the two socks come out ok. I’d hate to have to rip out a grafted sock.
The other issue I faced as I started the socks is making sure the stripes line up. I prefer to use a long-tail cast on so I try to remember how long the tail is so that when I start the second sock, I’m starting in the same place more or less.
So far so good. With one sock left to knit, I think I’ve covered most of my concerns. I’d hate to get too far along on my son’s second sock and find out that I was going to run out of yarn. I actually had about 20g leftover from my daughter’s socks in case I need a little extra for my son’s pair. But I should probably be ok with the one skein.
Once both of my kiddos are at college, I’ll probably be knitting like crazy to distract myself from their absence in our home. God, please keep them safe. Jimmy and Julia, I love you more than words can say. xoxo
Update! Here’s the completed pair for The Boy:
