Fairy Tale Knitting

Ever had one of those days, where the people around you leave you scratching your head and wondering how someone so dense could possibly live through the day without just keeling over dead?  When someone tells you that something you have done in a certain way for years and years is not only is wrong, but not possible?

Yeah, I had one of those days just about all week!

And to add insult to injury the recirculating pump on the dishwasher decided it was a great time to stop working.  Water goes in, water pumps out, but water does not splash around inside the dishwasher getting the dishes clean. Grrrrr.  Which also has the young adult and teens in my house yelling "Mom, can you turn your awful music down!" as I like to listen to music when I have to hand wash the dishes.  (I know, I know, first world problems.  I have food to put on those dishes, a house to keep the dishes in and better yet clean water to wash those dishes with!)

It was also a week of running all over town to doctor appts, not mine this time!....and IEP meetings, and....and....I finally caught up with myself yesterday evening!

Somewhere in there one of the knitters on Sock Knitters Anon on Ravelry put her Feb design up for testing in The Testing Pool.  The theme for this month was Literary and she had picked a fairy tale called Hop o' my Thumb, or Petit Poucet in French, which is her native language.  I messaged her that I didn't think I had time to actually knit the pattern but if she wanted a native speaker to check her English I was up for that.  As luck would have it though, some other things that I have on the burner are at the "hurry up and wait" point, so I did have time to cast it on...so I did!  I am glad I did because eyeballing the chart and knitting the chart were two different things and we caught a couple of little errors, which she has fixed and it is shaping up to be a very fun pattern.

Wanna see?

My tree on the back of the sock is much taller than hers was, I like LONG socks! But I love the way the roots merge into the slipped stitch heel flap.

Of course I had to rearrange all the stitches because I hate having decreases too near the end of a needle.  For me that always leads to ladders or little gaps running up beside those stitches, by moving the decreases to the center of the needle I don't run into that problem.
 
The beads that run along the side of the "path" that is the front of the sock are the small rocks that the boy left on the trail to show him and his brothers the way home. 
 
Not a lot of progress to talk about with Annapurna 3, the fingering weight version.
 
I jinxed myself when I said it would go faster, she is not traveling knitting and this past week all my knitting seemed to be traveling/waiting room knitting.

This week I am sure to get some at home knitting time.....I will have to wait for a dishwasher repairman at some point!

~M