Everyone seems to really like Joe! He’s pretty adorable. However, he is an ATTACK cat. Holy cow, does he bite! It’s crazy, you’ll just be sitting there and he’ll run up and chomp into your arm. Ouch.

I’m going to preface this post by saying that these photos suck. There’s not many prime natural light photo-taking opportunities these days. I’ll snag some good outdoor photos this weekend, in the meantime you can check out an accurate photo of the color here. Ok, I replaced the first photo with a direct-sunlight shot. My camera hates purple and it really is the best of the worst. I think that the green plastic table is a nice touch.

Pattern: Pseudo-Rib and Cable socks, but really just a rib and cable pattern with a short-row heel and standard toe decreases.
Yarn: Knitpicks Bare Superwash, dyed by moi!

I’m sure that Nancy Bush writes great patterns that produce beautiful socks with interesting details. Hell, I know she does. However, I have chosen to follow pretty much zero of the pattern of her Rib and Cable socks (from IK Fall 2005). My gauge was so much smaller that the yarn called for that I decided to just do my own thing. I’m sure that the pattern has a really cool heel and nifty toe treatment, but I didn’t actually read that far. Unfortunately, this leaves me with a pair of socks that I learned absolutely nothing from (a first for me), but whatever – it’s holiday knitting time, and the motto these days is Produce, Produce, Produce.

So, ribs and cables. Exciting! I did a short-row heel, which was super-mondo successful thanks to this tutorial by Misocrafty. I never understood why each side of my heel looked different until reading the tutorial – it turns out that I was picking up the wraps from the bottom on the knit side, but from the top on the purl side. Knowing is half the battle. I was going to write that I never had problems with holes in my short-row toes and heels, but a quick glance at the Baudelaire toes tells me otherwise – hole city, damn. Well, the psso method in the tutorial tightened things up perfectly for me. Look ma, no holes!

The Knitpicks yarn. Hmm. It’s very soft, even after dyeing. That’s good. However, it’s a bit splitty. Or maybe it was my super-sharp metal needles (which are getting a bit bent, thanks to my super-human strength death-grip). Time will tell how well this stuff wears. I kind of miss my super-sproingy Koigu.

All in all, I consider these socks a success! I think I still have some more work to do on them – the length fits my size 10 feet, and I know that the robmom (who these socks are for) has smaller feet than I do. I’ll probably frog about a half inch from the toes, so that they are a bit more snug. Let’s hope that they otherwise fit her well!