In which I undertake a project

Last winter a friend suggested I check out Janel Laidman's book "The Enchanted Sole", since I like to knit socks and I have a love of myth and fairy tales. I took both that book, and the first one Ms. Laidman published called "The Eclectic Sole" out of the Kitchener-Waterloo Knitters Guild Library, and I instantly fell in love.

There are 34 patterns between the two books, and only two that didn't immediately knock my socks off (pun intended). I asked my lovely yarn store owner at All Strung Out to order the books for me, and started planning. Did I want to leave out the two patterns that didn't grab me? Did I want to knit all of them, just to say that I had? What order did I want to do it in?

I wound up deciding that I would knit all 34 pairs of socks, starting with the first pattern in "The Eclectic Sole" and knitting them in order all the way through to the end of the second book. Every pair will be for me, and I'm not setting myself a time limit, but I want to knit them all.

I try to keep only 4 projects on the go at a time (or at least 4 that aren't hibernating; the ones in time-out don't count): two pairs of socks and two larger projects. My larger projects are currently a baby sweater and a grown-up sweater, and I have a sock on the go for a friend, so last night I cast on the first of my Janel Laidman Project socks.

It's called "Simplicity" and is one of the ones that I was originally on the fence about. I'm glad I left it in though, as even in the first 18 round of sock 1, I'm liking the way it looks.