I am totally excited about how the "horseshoe crab" socks are turning out - I'll have an in-progress photo tomorrow or Monday. At first I thought the pattern was messed up and either I had transcribed it wrong, or there was a typo in the book I got it from - but I decided to keep working and do a couple of repeats (it's a four-round pattern) before I ripped back.

The pattern is right; it just took a few rounds for it to emerge. For being called "Horseshoe Crab," it's a fairly dainty pattern and makes for nice lace socks. (It might not be the best pattern for on the foot if one were going to wear the socks in closed shoes; I think all the sl 1-k2tog-pssos would probably get a bit hard on the top of the foot).

I may go back to designing more of my own socks. I think part of it is the joy of seeing something no one's seen before - with socks in books, there's a picture to guide you, and even if you use a different color yarn (or a variegated yarn when a solid's used in the original), you still kind of know how it's going to turn out.

I also started a "Bob." Rather than using the felting wool I talked about, I'm using Paton's "Mosaic," which is a yarn I like (even though it's one of those novelty yarns with bits and bobs coming off of it) and it was being sold on clearance (97 cents a skein) at the Jo-Ann's nearest me.

One other thing I like about toys...you can use all kinds of crazy yarns that you like that you might not use in a garment for yourself.

I'm thinking that as I make toys - both knitting and crocheting them - I'm slowly building up a pattern-sense; I'd love to do some of my own designing someday. (I think an amigurumi version of a Moomintroll would be a truly lovely thing; I can envision it but can't quite picture how to get it to come out the way I want in terms of crochet stitches. Maybe someday.) Mainly what I need to figure out is how to get rounded shapes of different sorts - you do increases and decreases on a different "schedule" depending on whether you want an orb or an oval. And getting pieces that are rounded yet "turn up" a bit (like a Moomintroll's snout) require other techniques. So I'm taking all of the toy-making as partly an apprenticeship of sorts, and hope that someday I'll be able to design knit and crochet toys (I mean, where I can write out the pattern of them and either give or sell or submit the patterns somewhere).

And besides - I just really like soft toys. They are one of the things that make me happy. So what if some might think I'm "too old" for them.