big goals little goals sock goals

Sometimes you sit back and assess your goals. Big goals, little goals, clean the redwood branches out of eaves, level the back yarn, organize the studios, vacuum, weed, clean off my desk, go for daily walks, get skinny, become kinder, meditate regularly, live simply. A less esoteric goal of mine was to wear only hand knit socks in retirement. I thought perhaps 12 pairs was a good number. This is twelve new pairs, and does not count any currently in use. So I am up to about four and a half pairs. Six should be complete in the next few months. I am ready to retire from my consistently paying job and move on to my other endeavors full time. I am ready, but perhaps my financial planning isn’t ready, so I have some years to go.

I have more than enough socks-in-waiting or I should say sock yarn-in-waiting for at least two dozen pairs. I’ll save these yarns for another photo shoot - yarns from my visit to Finland, Sweden, and Denmark. Yarns from Woodland Woolworks including a lovely Welsh item called Jitterbug made by Colinette. Jitterbug doesn’t seem the right name. It is a tightly twisted, soft but durable sock yarn. Jitterbug sounds as if it should have things flying off of it – like Squiggles. The color I have is velvet damson, not listed on the colinnete.com website. Shades of my visit to the indigo dye master Kenichi Utsuki of Aizenkobo in Kyoto. Deep blue to black. This will be a fine pair of socks. And just coincidentally this could lead to another trip to Wales. Colinette conducts workshops and has affiliated bread and breakfasts and self catering cottages like the one below in Beudy Dolpebyll, Llangadfan.
Beudy means cowhouse by the way. This is in mid-Wales sort of midway between Shrewsbury and Snowdonia.