On Knitting: Socks, and Chickens

Last I visited here in my little corner of the internet, winter was still well upon us. It’s hard to believe that was almost two months ago now, and I think it’s safe to say that spring has firmly settled in here in Spring Creek. With highs in the low 80s yesterday and today it’s already feeling like summer, but we do have some lows below freezing this week so we’re not quite there yet. I’m itching to get outside and tidy up the yard and gardens, but I know the bugs are still sleeping in the underbrush and hollow stalks. Soon it will be time.

Because I always end up coming here much less frequently than I’d like, I’ve realized (and have been told) that my posts are way too long. It takes me forever just to write about everything I’m working on and I think that is partly what keeps me away for so long. So this year I am going to try something different by writing shorter, and hopefully more frequent, posts that focus on just one or two fiber crafts. We’ll see how it goes, and do let me know if you like this format better! I think I already know the answer. Today we’re talking knitting.

The fact that I only have blurry photos of these socks is a travesty, but I put off taking photos until five minutes before my friend was coming to pick me up to go swimming and they were a birthday gift for him, so I just threw them on a rock, snapped some photos, and handed them over when he arrived. I think this is the fourth annual pair of birthday socks I have made for him, which really just started as a thank you gift because he helped us unload our moving trucks when we moved down here in 2022 and he seemed to appreciate them, so I kept it going.

The yarn I used is Butternut Sock from Northwoods Fibers in the colorway “Take Me to the Mountains”, which felt appropriate. It is a typical fiber blend of 80% superwash merino, 20% nylon and I love the colors. This time around I pulled a dormant skein of Tosh Sock out of deep stash to use as the contrast toe/heel/cuff in “Charcoal”. I don’t quite remember how long that yarn has been in my stash, but I’m pretty confident it has been at least a decade. It was time to put it to use.

I improvised the stitch pattern for these socks to try to force myself out of my usual go-to of either plain stockinette, or 2×1 rib. You’ve seen those socks plenty of times. It’s easy and mindless to sit down and knit round and round without having to focus on what I’m doing, but I also already have an entire sock drawer full of plain socks so I’m trying to branch out a bit.

It still feels odd to me that I knit socks so frequently because I never used to consider myself a sock knitter. Now it feels like socks are the most common thing I make. Honestly, lately I think that’s really all I have the mental capacity for. I don’t have to reference a pattern, I have my stitch counts memorized, I know when to start the gusset and the heel… it’s easy and accessible, and that’s what I need when I have the time to sit down and work on a project.

Once my friend’s socks were done, I decided it was time to make another pair for myself. Here’s a confession – I don’t actually wear my handknit socks very often. I oddly hate it when my feet are too warm, and I only pull them out on the coldest of winter days. Even still, some of my older pairs are showing wear and a few have developed holes, so I want to make sure I keep the drawer full. I’ve darned holes before, heck I’ve even cut the toes off socks and reknit them, but it always feels more gratifying (and worth the time) to knit a new pair.

The yarn for this pair has also been marinating in my stash for quite a while. The sticker on the label is from Natural Stitches, which was my local yarn shop when I lived in Pittsburgh. I moved away from Pittsburgh in 2012, so it has to have been in my stash for at least 13 years if not longer. This is Tosh Sock in the colorway “Mare”. (As an aside, I just discovered while looking for a link that Natural Stitches has since closed. That’s sad to see, it was a great shop.) Do I know what color this yarn is? Not a chance. Do I know why the colorway is called “Mare”? Also no. But I do think it’s pretty. (I’m back half an hour later to say I’m still thinking about the color, and I’ve realized that it’s likely a reference to the Latin “mare”, meaning sea, and not, as my rural brain was trying to get me to understand, a female horse.)

I am through the foot of the first sock and working my way up the leg. I’m using the same Charcoal as the contrast that I used on my friend’s socks and I think it’s a good fit and in this case it’s even the same yarn base, so hooray for cohesion! This is the exact same stitch pattern that I used for the most recent pair of socks I made for Kyle – Pyramid of Skulls – except I turned it inside out. While knitting his socks, I really liked the way the inside of the fabric looked so I thought I would give it a try here. Simple texture, easy to follow, exactly what I needed.

I also recently pulled some mohair/silk out of my stash because I was itching to do a little airy something. I’ve had a pattern bookmarked for a while for a simple, elegant, lacy neck “thing”. Call it a scarf, shawl, kerchief, what have you, but it seemed like an enjoyable project to work on.

The trouble is, I didn’t realize I bought two different color options for the beads, and now I don’t know which were meant for this project! Which color would you choose? I’m not sure if you can tell, because I can’t, but one is clear crystal lined with black, and the other claims to be turquoise (but it just looks silver to me). Help a colorblind guy out!

I’ll leave you with some non-crafting content because I can’t not share this with you. At the beginning of February for Kyle’s birthday we got 8 more baby chicks! I really only intended to get Kyle a couple of a particular breed I knew he had been wanting. What I didn’t realize was that during the colder months, the order limit was 8 chicks and not the 3 or 4 I thought it was. So I just kept filling up the cart with more and more until I was able to place an order. Normally I wouldn’t order chicks so early in the season, but February 3 was the ONLY date this particular breed was available from the hatchery for all of 2025, so I held my breath and hoped for the best. Thankfully we had a surprisingly warm spell and they arrived with no issue on a 65-degree day.

They were such little cuties, and they spent the past two months living in our bathtub. But they kept growing, and growing, and growing…

And FINALLY last week the little stinkers were big enough to move outside into their coop full time!

We’re still keeping them separated from our adult flock until they’re larger, but thank god they were finally fully feathered and ready to move out because they were definitely outgrowing that tub, and truly produced so much mess. At any rate, say hello to Noodle, Poppy, Sweet Pea, Skunk, Badger, Brownie, Arrowhead and Maybelline. I still have my suspicions that one of them might be a roo, but time will tell. For now it’s fun to watch them grow and dash around outside. Hopefully adding eight more hens to the flock will take some of the pressure off our poor Nuggie, who seems to be the roosters’ favorite. She’s looking pretty bedraggled these days and we need to spread the love around!