July for A4A

Pat and I both knit for Afghans for Afghans every time a campaign comes along. (If you want to see what other people are knitting, take a look over here.) When we started this year-long sock blogging project, we threw a few wild card months into the schedule, and also agreed that if there was a chance to knit socks for A4A, that would trump previous plans for the month. Ann Rubin does an amazing job of working out the logistics of getting things to Afghanistan, despite the challenges of war, corruption, expense, and who knows what else. . . and she doesn't always have a whole lot of lead time. A sudden chance arose to send socks for women this month, so that's what we're knitting.

I've been on vacation, spending a lot of time in the passenger seat while we drove hundreds of miles -- not to mention a weekend at a folk festival, which is prime time for knitting as long as it doesn't rain too hard. I finished these three pairs:


Technically, only the lighter blue pair, with the light stripes, qualifies, because it was started in July. The darker blue pair was started in June, finished July 1, and the multicolored pair on the left was started in June and finished July 2.

All are worsted weight, knit on 40 stitches. The two solid blue pairs with stripes are made of Bartlett yarn; the pair on the left (my favorite) is made from 2 strands of Kroy sock yarn held together. Kroy is a little heavier than most sock yarns I use (166 yards, about 152 meters, per 50 g) and it made a wonderful, squishy, bouncy fabric. I used one self-striping yarn held with one tweedy yarn in similar colors; it did very interesting things! I'm already looking for the next pair of sock yarns to try; meanwhile I've cast on for another Bartlett pair. These go so fast, and time is short; I hope to get two more pairs out to A4A in time for this collection.

I believe this is the earliest in the month I've ever completed our assignment.

The three pairs in the picture, plus Pat's blue socks from June, go in the mail today.