Sock Madness Strikes Again

After taking a year off, mainly because I thought about signing up too late and missed the deadline by a couple of days, I am back in for Sock Madness this year. This is going to be the 6th year of Sock Madness and the 4th time that I've participated. I think SMII was my favorite so far. It was the first time that I was involved and there were a lot of fun pictures taken for the creative prize category. Between the adrenaline rush of new challenges, and cementing my love of sock knitting, it was such great fun that I keep signing up each year. But when I look back at the socks I knit each year I think SMIV has been the most my speed. I especially loved the Cool Beans I made.

As always I have no idea what patterns we'll be given as challenges this year, but we have recently received our list of supplies needed. One of the new ones to me are beads. I have made beads and used beads in jewelry, but I've never used beads on a sock before. At least I already have a decent collection of seed beads ready to go. I'm going to order a couple new colors of sock yarn, make a beading tool (I'll show you that later I'm sure), and keep knitting on Jeff's socks to try and finish them before the competition starts.

Poor Jeff, I complain about the size of his feet every time I knit him socks. It's not his fault that I have smallish feet and he has largish feet. You'd think that if you like knitting then having a sock that lasts forever would be a good thing, but one of the reasons that I like to knit socks because they are Quick. I did some rudimentary math and found that the reason it seems like Jeff's socks take forever to knit is that for each one I knit for him I could knit a pair for myself.

Not counting the cuff, heel or toe stitches, but just the main leg & foot rounds:
Jeff = 15,360 stitches
Tara = 8,192 stitches

On the bright side the competition socks ought to fly by, right? And all these extra stitches will get my wrists and fingers nice and limbered up by the time we get started in March.