The first Finished Object from my short break:



These are what I was referring to earlier as the "I Can Has Cheezburger?" socks because the color scheme - sort of a medium brown, a dark brown, yellow, and red - made me think of a bun with a hamburger, cheese, and ketchup on it. And of course, because I am still mildly obsessed by those silly LOLcats, I had to refer to them by that name.

The actual color name is "clay," which I suppose deals with the different colors on the sock, though I will observe I've never seen a red clay quite as red as the red in this yarn is. (The other colors are fairly true for different colors of soil I've seen.)

The colors also make me think a little bit of autumn leaves, though down here (and this is one of my few regrets about living in Oklahoma), we really don't get much in the way of fall colors, or at least not Ohio and Michigan did when I lived there. (Gosh. Cuyahoga Valley National Recreation Area in October - I miss you.)



The socks are a very simple design - I did a picot top and then switched to a k7, p1 ribbing, which is subtle and nice and gives the socks almost a bit of a "vintage" feel, or so I think (I've seen pictures of men's socks from the 30s that had this same kind of very wide rib on them).

Incidentally, this is the same yarn that Lydia is using for her current socks (which, I suppose, will soon become School's In socks - if her schedule is anything like mine). She's doing them a bit differently - toe up for one thing.

I didn't try to make the socks be "identical" because the pattern repeat is long enough that I was concerned that I wouldn't have enough yarn if I started winding off and cutting out to try and make them perfect.

I have to admit that I enjoy a little "imperfection" now and then. I've joked about being a "recovering perfectionist" (and I am, still, pretty bad in some ways, though lately it tends to manifest itself more in a belief that nothing I do is ever completely "good enough," rather than that sort of paralysis where you can't ever FINISH a thing because you keep tweaking it to try to make it "perfect.")

I also have to say I enjoy doing simple socks - socks where there is just some kind of basic ribbed pattern, or a sock where you do ribbing at the cuff and then just motor along in plain stockinette for the rest of the sock. Part of it is that there's no pattern you have to consult - I do carry along my little print out of "Heels by Number" (which is like gold to me and I hope I never lose it because I'm not entirely sure it's still available online). But other than that, I need no instructions - I have both the "round toe" (which I tend to use mostly these days) and the more-traditional "Socka toe" memorized, so all I need to knit socks are the needles, the yarn, and a measuring tape.

I can also work on the socks when I'm reading, or when I'm watching something fairly absorbing on the television - I don't have to refer to a pattern, there are no tricky yarn-overs to be sure not to lose, no tight and fiddly knit-two-togethers to make the pattern, no need of a cable needle.

And although I enjoy doing the lace and cabled socks, I have to admit that sometimes it's kind of a relief, almost, to sit down with some self-patterning (or otherwise interestingly colored) yarn and just decide, "Okay, I am going to do a 3x2 ribbing on these" or "I'm going to do these as just plain stockinette." They seem to be the socks that get done fastest (and they seem to be the ones I wear more often, probably because the simpler construction works OK in closed shoes whereas lace, if I wear it inside a closed shoe, will quickly and painfully imprint itself upon my foot).

Felici, also, I have to say, is a nice yarn. It's very soft yet it is machine washable. I have no idea how well it will wear. I have a couple of the newer colors ("Gelato" and "Provence") in my yarn-stash for future socks - and they will probably also be simple stockinette-or-rib socks as well.

Sometimes there is something pleasant and good about doing something SIMPLE; I can't quite put my finger on why - I suppose part of it is the restfulness of not having to concentrate too hard on a pattern, part of it may be the fast completion time. But part of it may be my innate liking for unfussiness - I tend to prefer things that are simple but do their job well over things that are terribly ornate. For example, I prefer Mission style furniture to most true Victorian or rococo pieces, and I'd rather eat off of something like Fiestaware than off of Limoges.

(Where this leaves my love of steampunk design - where there are blandishments for blandishments' sake - I do not know, other than to quote Oscar Wilde about consistency being the hobgoblin of small minds...)