Warm Toes/Warm Heart

Here are "lucky socks" that I made for Emmy so that she can enter into her finals week at college feeling more confident about test-taking. They are just simple ribbed socks that I started a long time ago. The yarn is County Clare in Socks That Rock that Lynn of ColorJoy gave me over a year ago. Aren't I slow? I started this socks and then, for some reason, had set them aside for so long! Then when I needed to make Emmy a quick pair of socks to put in her college finals "care package" I was able to pick these up and whip them out quickly.



I've developed a policy where I am going to knit one project at a time instead of the multiple projects I usually work on all at once. Here are my new knitting "rules":

• One small/quick project on the needles at any one time. These are items such as hats, socks, mittens, scarfs, accessories.
• I do one NEW project and then either complete or FROG one old project before casting on another new one. These County Clare socks were an example of an oldy but goody.
• I can have 1 afghan and 1 sweater on the needles concurrently, and work on those larger projects in between the newly started shorter projects. In this way, I can get the bigger things gradually done. These usually take me forever and a day, but this way I feel work on them a bit in between and hopefully not feel overly stressed out by them.
• This "one at a time" policy does not apply to spinning, as I seem to be able to work on multiple projects at one time on my three wheels and not have any angst or difficulty in completing projects. This is probably due to the fact that spinning is just so darn relaxing!

What I am finding is that on the "in between" projects for the UFOs that there are many UFOs in my closet that have remained there for so long because I just plain don't want to do them anymore. So I'm going to be more "frogging" than finishing on many of those old haunts. And you know, it feels really GOOD to frog because I didn't realize, having those things hanging out in the closet are stealing some of my mental/creative energy just fretting about all that I have unfinished and undone.

For my "new" project this time, it is Nikol Lohr's Bunny Hop Slippers. It's a thrummed slipper pattern that I highly recommend. Nothing is warmer or cozier than thrums! I was always unsure of how to knit them before, this was an easy way to learn how. It's a free pattern over on Ravelry and the pattern shows you how to do them right in the instructions.

Here is the pair of Bunny Hop slippers that I completed after the other day for my daughter. She wanted hers without the bunny face, ears and tail, but on the next pair that I make for me, they will have ears, eyes, tail details.

If you need a quick Christmas gift or whatever kind of quick gift, I can't recommend these highly enough. They are fast. Take 1 skein of chunky yarn or two skeins of worsted held together. They are a great stashbuster. Inside, you use shredded roving for the thrums. I did the actual knitting on these in about 2 days, but it took me several more days to find the big lime buttons.

If you are making them for children, you use a smaller needle. On these, I used size 9s and made the women's small size.