Thanks for the nice comments on the Snicket sock. It's a timeconsuming pattern to do but I do like how it turns out.

I've been thinking about socks, thinking about making up some of my own patterns again for socks, thinking about using some of the mounds of self-patterning or busy variegated yarn I've accumulated.

I'm seriously thinking about doing an ongoing "study" (if it's not too pretentious to call it that) of different types of ribbing. Nancy Bush has four examples of ribbed socks at the start of Knitting Vintage Socks, there are other combinations of ribbing (either where you do a sort of welted rib where you alternate wide and narrow bands of knit st inbetween the purl st), there are waffled ribs, there are things like fisherman's rib and lacy ribs...and I think most of them would work well with a yarn where a more detailed lace or cable pattern would either get lost or fight with the yarn.

I have, once again, referred to my various stitch dictionaries. (And you know? I think in terms of prettiness, the Stansfield book that Lark put out is my favorite. And it seems to be a widely used one; things like Sensational Knitted Socks refer to patterns like "Stansfield #12" and such. So why not just go back to the source?)

I really love the stitch dictionaries. (Even the ones that aren't as great as the Stansfield). I can look at them and just start thinking about all kinds of projects I want to make - socks, and fancy scarves, and vests with panels of narrow cable stitches on either side of the button band (that's what I'm thinking of for the Nashua yarn I bought over Christmas - just a simple button front vest, but with two narrow cabled bands just to either side of the button band.)

I have a lot of stitch dictionaries. Several of them were purchased at JoAnn's with a 40% off coupon. (I have to admit I'm kind of bad about that. I get the coupon, I take it with me when I'm down that way, go to JoAnn's, maybe don't see anything I totally NEED, but then I'm like, "But you drove down here and you have this coupon, just find a book or something" and I wind up coming home with yet another book).

I have the 3 Barbara Walker treasuries (each ordered from Schoolhouse Press - bought them when I was a grad student and so the cost of each one was comparatively kind of large).

I have the previously mentioned Stansfield book. (Another reason I love it is all the stitches are charted)

I have one of the Harmony guides - the old format, the big slim paperback. All of the stitches are kind of crowded on the pages, it's harder to look at, IIRC there are no charts - I don't use this one as much.

I have the three Vogue books on knitting stitches.

I have one called something like "Super Stitches" which is a funny little paperback thing. It has three swatches on every right-hand page and on the left-hand page, the directions on how to do the stitch. I think this is the one I bought most recently and I do have to say I like the layout.

I also have a big Reader's Digest hardback of stitches.

There are certain stitches that are repeated between the books - between all books, I think - but every book has its own unique stitch patterns that aren't anywhere else.

It kind of amazes me, how many different combinations there are of knit, purl, yarn over, kfb, work through the back loop, decreases, and "weird" things like multiple wraps. I wonder if anyone's tried to work out mathematically how many different potential stitches there could be. (I suppose you'd have to constrain it somehow, and say "how many different stitch patterns with a repeat of 8" or something like that).

But it's one of those little things that makes you marvel at human ingenuity - many of these stitches are hundreds of years old. Someone had to come up with them for the first time. Did they do it just by playing around and found that what they made was pretty, or did they say "I want to make a pattern in my knitting that will look like the ripples waves make in the sand" and they set out with their knowledge of yarn overs and decreases from other projects and actually invented the Crest O' the Wave stitch?

How does someone invent a new stitch pattern? It seems to me almost like figuring out a new way to shake hands.