Having introduced you to all my sock yarn, I let you in to a little, private cupboard of my life (specifically, the yarn cupboard).  Now I’m going to take it to the next level and show you some of the socks I currently know, some I wish I knew better, and some I’m hoping, someday, to make part of my life.

By the way, if the excitement of all this threatens to overwhelm you at any point, take a break and rehydrate. Socks are heady things.

Here we have one of my under-appreciated prizes.  This is pretty nifty yarn. I bought it off eBay from an Australian dyer. It’s awesome.  See how it knits up into a watermelon sock? See? See? Little pips and everything!  This sock is my only documented instance of the widely-feared Second Sock Syndrome (SSS). Normally I build up to ramming speed by the time I get to the end of the first sock, and cast on the second one right away, but this one…

As you can’t see here, its mate is not so much a sock as a potential sock.  I finished the first watermelon sock about three years ago (my God), and I’m not 100% happy with it.  It’s too snug. So, in what was clearly a rationally-considered, thoroughly-thought-through plan, I stuffed it in a bag with its amorphous partner and left it in the sock stash.  I think it’s high time I reclaimed this yarn, and turned it into a sock worthy of its awesomeness.

And what have we here?  Lo, most of a skein of Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Sock in Motherlode.  Ah, a beautiful yarn if ever there was one.   An adored indulgance, invested in with a gift certificate M gave me last year for Christmas. I think this will aim to be a pair of footlets for me (you know what I mean when I say ‘footlets’, right? I mean little sockees that don’t cover the ankle, but stop just around the ankle bone.  I’ve heard them called socklets or something, but I like the sound of ‘footlets’ and it’s my blog, ya dig?).  I would dearly love to turn this into lacey socks, but I’m pretty certain there won’t be enough yarn for anything more fancy than stockinette.

Teeny balls, waiting to be made into bootees.  Adorable in their own right, these are leftover Patonyle balls; the rest of them is already in the world somewhere, in sock form, and I love the yarn far too much for it to be left in the bottom of the sock yarn box. They’re (someday) going to be funky little bootees.

Oh, by the way, I finished those socks I was working on.  (Damned blurry photo, I’m afraid, but one of the best representations of the colour and pattern that I got out of my camera tonight.  Just squint.)  While you’re admiring that blurry pic, I’d like you to take a moment to acknowledge how brilliantly I’ve lined up the pattern.  Aren’t they perfect?  Yes.  Yes they are.  I can’t believe how effortlessly perfect these socks have come out.  Fastest damn socks I’ve ever knit, too, provided you don’t count the nine-month hiatus between when I lost one of my sock needles while in Europe in January and when I rediscovered the unfinished sock in my knitting shelf.  I was working on them while watching a DVD in bed (I know, too much glamour, right?) and had a brief rest while I admired them.  And then…

Yup.  That sock yarn on my bedside table came in handy.

Anyway, this is my Friday evening tonight, prior to heading out for dinner with some chums:

Jealous? Yeah, you are. You’re totally jealous.