This is Tuesday's post, a bit early.

(I have a suspicion that the disk trouble I've been having is that the Dell floppy drives mess up the disks and make them not want to read on my camera or elsewhere. So I'm posting this from home.

This would not be the first time a Dell A:/ drive gave disk grief. I regularly had students' papers that got messed up in the computer labs. Because, you know, so many people are jamming their disks in those drives and unbalancing the innards.

I should just break down and buy one of the memory sticks for my Mavica, instead of always relying on floppy disks that seem prone to wear out or get damaged).

Anyway. I got far enough on the first of the "Column Socks" to give a little peek at them. I'm sort of altering the pattern on the fly, so the two socks won't be perfectly identical, but will probably be so minorly not-identical that only I will know.

Here's the best shot I could get showing the pattern. Basically it's columns of rib, spaced with purl stitches, and with "pediments" formed by a cable turn and some plain knit/plain purl rows.



I think I am going to do one more "pediment" and then one more set of the columns before doing the heel flap. And then I'm going to neck it down, probably from 78 sts to 72 sts.

They are coming out a bit more tightly knit than I expected.



Here they are tried on. I think 78 sts was the right choice, even though I kept looking at the early stages thinking they would be too loose.

(Yeah, I know. I have really ugly, beat-up looking feet. It comes from doing the hour's "weight bearing" exercise each day and also from wearing Birkenstocks [without socks] most of the summer.)

I'm using Sheepjes Invicta Extra (bought ages ago from Yarn Forward) for these. Given the comparative bargain price (still $3.69 a 50 g skein from Yarn Forward), this is a really nice sock yarn. It's softer than both the KnitPicks "Essential" (which is really a disappointing yarn given the quality of the other KnitPicks offerings) and also nicer than the Elann "Essential 4-ply."

It also has nice stitch definition, being fairly smooth and tightly spun. And it feels nicer than either of those other "inexpensive" sock yarns. This yarn feels comparable to Opal or Regia, in my opinion. Maybe even a little softer than Opal prior to washing.

Based on the short experience here, I'd definitely knit with Invicta again. Don't know how it washes and wears but I can't imagine it would be much different from other sock yarns given that it has a similar spin and similar fiber content.

It's fun to be doing some of my own designing again, even if it's "only" socks. I used to do a lot of my own making-up-of-patterns a few years ago (before I even had the blog). Part of it was I think I was still kind of in what is called "beginner's mind" about knitting - that state of grace where you haven't yet learned what's "wrong" and what's "right," what's "done" and what's "not done."

I also think it was before the huge explosion of online stuff. I KNOW it was before widespread blogs, and it was before Knitty and MagKnits and the other free online magazines. Part of it was, I think, if I wanted "innovative" socks I had to pretty much figure them out myself, or wait for Nancy Bush to have a pattern in Interweave. And then everything came out, everything grew big and giant.

And you know? I have to make an admission. I looked at the most recent Knitty and I felt a little sad. Because, you know? I was thinking of coming up with a pair of Dancing Granny socks or a Dancing Granny hat. (The stitch pattern is an old Scandinavian pattern; it's in Vibekke Lind's book). I kind of looked at that issue - and earlier issues, and other stuff out there. And I admit, I shut down a little bit. I said to myself, "There truly is nothing new under the sun. Everything worth doing has already been done."

And I felt sad. Part of it was jealous-sad (why didn't *I* come up with that idea? or Why didn't I try to crank it out first, and publish it first? I could have had all kinds of people e-mailing me their thanks and adulation for what I did!*) And part of it was sort of a feeling of inferiority, that nothing I could do could ever live up creativity-wise or execution-wise to what all these other people are doing, and I should just give it up, maybe even shut down the blog, and convince myself that my life is just one blind follower-ship.

But you know, it's kind of freeing to say 'screw that' to the various bad thoughts. One of my friends used to talk about binding and gagging her inner critic and throwing him (for some reason, HER inner critic was a HIM) in a corner for a few days, so she could work. I think I need to get better at doing that.

And get back in tune with the Anne Lamott inspired idea of "sh*tty first drafts." That worked for me for a while, especially on writing up research - telling myself, just write for an hour, don't censor yourself, don't look back and go, "oh, this part should really go there," just write. But I've gotten away from that for some reason and I need to come back to it. Need to come back to it in more areas of my life. I've been too timid lately, too prone to look at things I might try and see all the things that wouldn't work out, instead of saying to myself, but what if it did work out?

So we'll see. At least I'm trying to design socks again. And today I began writing a first, rough, sh*tty draft of a research project I want to start. And once I got the words on the paper, began to see more clearly how I could do it and what some of the things to look out for might be.

(*And I admit to a not very pretty part of my personality: I really need to hear adulation and thanks and I get cranky and dysphoric and start to feel insignificant and "invisible" if I'm not doing anything that gets me a response. So far, I've only worked for positive response - I haven't yet gone so far as to allow myself to believe "trouble is a form of attention!" But still. I think I burned out my "ability to say 'damn I'm good' even if no one else is" bulb a few years ago and haven't quite figured out how to replace it.)