The Case of the Missing Horcrux

I love knitting socks for my 6 year old son. His enthusiasm for hand-knits is unsurpassed. The problem with this enthusiasm is that he tends to disappear with the first sock before I have had a chance to complete the second one. Case in point, the Horcrux socks. When I knitted Gryffindor socks for his sister, Stinky Pete immediately had to have Ravenclaw socks. We picked out the yarn together – the avid Harry Potter fan will realize that these are not quite Ravenclaw colors but they are the colors that Stinky liked best. He pestered me non-stop until I finished the first sock and promptly vanished with said sock before I got a photo to prove that it existed. I knitted happily on the second sock until I got to the point where I needed to check the length of the first sock to know where to start the toe – I am a bit weird about having both socks the same length. I asked Stinky for the first sock and he had no clue where it was. I sent the entire family on a fruitless search and ended up so disgusted that I slipped the sock onto waste yarn and started another sock. We have been searching off and on for about a week for this sock to no avail. I was beginning to think that it had committed sock suicide and jumped into the black hole at the back of the dryer.

Well, the unfinished sock kept taunting me until I couldn’t stand it any longer. I slipped it back on the needles and finished it off using my son’s foot instead of the other sock to determine the length. I immediately took the sock outside for a photo shoot – once bitten, twice shy, you know. I also refrained from giving the second sock to Stinky until he found the first one. I was contemplating Photo Shopping the picture of the first sock to make it look like I had a pair – but I would have known that it was only one sock so that would have never worked.

Last night, I was gathering a load of laundry and there buried underneath Stinky Pete’s dirty blue jeans was the missing sock. Lest you think I never do laundry, I had checked the hamper for the silly sock before – even though there was absolutely no reason for a clean sock to be in the dirty laundry. Obviously, the alien life form that had previously stolen the sock thought that hiding the sock in the dirty laundry would keep me from realizing that the sock had been stolen in the first place. Hopefully, next time they will not steal the hand knitted socks.

So now, Stinky has two socks – which is handy since he has two feet – and I have photographic proof that I did, in deed, knit a pair of socks rather than just one. Balance has been restored to the universe.

The Horcrux sock is a fun pattern to knit. This is the second complete pair from this pattern and I have another Gryffindor pair about half way complete – these will be my first time to knit 2 socks on 2 circs.

The pattern got a little hairy around rows 15 and 17 where the stitches have to shift from one needle to another. This is really easy on dpns but proved quite problematic on circs. I am sure there is a trick that I just don’t know but I ended up getting the stitch shuffle completed with the aid of a spare dpn. Think in the future I will reserve the patterns with stitch shifts for dpns. I should have this third pair of Horcruxes finished by tomorrow – which is good since my daughter is giving them to her daughter’s best friend on Wednesday for her birthday. And after that I will FINALLY get to knit a pair of these for myself – maybe.

In other news, I got this

from my wonderful LYS on Friday. Joan, the owner, has also gotten in some new sock yarns that I MUST try as well as some Louet Euro-Flax in fantabulous colors. I think it would make life much easier if I just direct deposited the paycheck into Joan’s account. Did I mention that she is teaching a Fair Isle class in June? I have dabbled with Fair Isle before but nothing as ambitious as a sweater. Can’t wait.