Socks that weren't supposed to happen

 

Pink socks are finished.   The first one seemed to take only a few days, but the second one lagged a bit.   Mainly because we did some maple syrup boils, and had a lot of time consuming stuff while I was knitting it.  It's Cascade Heritage Paints.   If I could have found their solid version of this yarn, I'd have been happier, but they only had the Paints colourways.  They're okay but it's the Cascade sock yarn which is the nice part.  It's easy to knit, fine enough and soft enough to make a comfortable sock, and reasonably priced.   The downside, is that it's difficult to find locally.

Those pink ones were going to be the last socks I'd planned on making for a while.  However, the weather has been miserable.  It's been cold, blustery and snowy.  Despite the snow not sticking to the ground, it's been fairly wintery out.  So on Friday night, I grabbed a skein of sock yarn, wound it into a cake and started kntting.   I didn't take a photo of the yarn in the skein, which was nice enough.  Once I wound it into a cake, it was really stunning.   The socks are kntting up as "interesting", but they are warm and fun.  I'm pretty sure the second sock will be almost impossible to match, so they'll just be different.   This is a Mary Maxim yarn, and it was on super sale.  It knits up nicely and quickly.  It's soft enough and definitely has some pretty colours.  While I didn't really need to knit up another pair of socks right now, the weather sort of demands it.

On Saturday, we had dark and gloomy skies.   Outside it really did seem like the description from a trashy mystery novel.  Hubby had to work and when he got home, he rushed in telling me he'd chased a hawk away.  It's not difficult to do.  The hawk sits on a hydro line and when they see us, they fly off.

I went out 5 minutes later, and the hawk was back.   He flew off and I started checking for my chooks.  Usually they run up to me when they see me, or I hear them murmelling in the shrubs.   However, it was silent.   I finally found 3 of them hiding in some shrubs near back and they let me escort them into the barn.   A while later I found another one behind the woodpile.  When she saw me she raced under the trailer and then behind the greenhouse and along the back treeline into the barn.    I couldn't find the other two for anything.   I kept checking until it was nearly dark, and finally found a 5th chook, who made it safely into the barn.    I was pretty sure we'd lost the 6th girl but didn't see a sign of her.  Of course I had been looking for live chickens.  The next morning, I unhappily found the 6th girl at the front of the property.    So we're down to 5 chooks now.  I've been keeping them inside right now, to make sure that the hawk and whatever other predator who feasted on the remains, don't think we're an open buffet for chicken dinners.

So knitting that bright and cheerful sock did make me feel  a little less sad too.