Day trip, new book...

Took a day trip today. My hubby and I just had to get out of the house and go somewhere. We drove to Bainbridge Island and I got to visit Churchmouse Yarns and Teas, one of my fave knit shops. I took the socks I am knitting for keeping busy in the car while Danny drove.

These are my two at a time socks. Plain grey socks knitted with Fortissima Socke for Josh, my new son-in-law. He won't wear any socks but Plain Grey Socks. So here they are. And no, I am not knitting them on two cirular needles, or even one long circular needle. I am knitting them at one time on DPN's. The "old-fashioned-and-yet-comfortable-because-circular-needles-for-socks-drives-me-crazy-way". I really have tried. More than once. And it isn't that I can't do it. Even just the plain Magic Loop drives me nuts. I can do it. But do I want to? No. Let the knitting world make all of their socks on circs. I am resisting. And my daughters will tell you how hard it is to change my mind once I have made it up. *grin*

Ok, enough of sounding so defensive! So, I'm in the car, knitting. The perfect day. And 45 minutes at Churchmouse. I bought two small skeins of the Regia Kaffe Fasett sock yarn, in the Landscape Caribbean 4260 colorway. I browsed, picked up some tea for my daughter, Corinne, and also bought a book I'm quite excited about. It is Folk Knitting in Estonia by Nancy Bush. The book has beautiful projects in it, nearly all of them stunning colorwork-mittens, gloves, socks. Hilia's Mittens on page 75 are so sweet and so pretty. Also intriguing me are Anv's Christmas Gloves. I have never made gloves OR mittens, so it will be fun to pull this out one of these days when I am through with all the socks in my plans. Here is the "thing" that sold me on this wonderful book however. More than the patterns and the pages of history (which I always love to read in any knitting book) was an Estonian Folk Song titled Beautymaker. I won't type out the whole song here because of copyright, but here is one line: "Joy tucked between burdens." What a wonderful way to describe knitting. Of course, knitting can also be a joy "tucked" between joys. But when I think of the joy that knitting brought to me when I first had learned it, while I was still so challenged by the burdens that I had to bear, this song fits so very well and makes my heart glad.