Writing yarns on pretty yarns

This, my friends, is why you don't cut yourself off from a great yarn club just because you think you have too much yarn already:

It's the November installment of the Knitterly Things club I rejoined after a couple of years off to 'catch up'.  I missed so many great exclusive club colour combinations!  and I'm so glad I didn't miss this one.

(or the candy, which turned out to be white chocolate with peppermint crunch.  they were AWESOME.)

Of course, now I want to spend the next two weeks knitting more socks for me instead of knitting for Christmas, but that would be crazy because there is still quite a lot to do even though I have been spectacularly organized this year and also, shopped for most things.

One thing that is coming along and shouldn't be neglected is the pair of Turkish Bed Socks I am knitting for Carol:

The design requires you to stitch up a long opening at the heel-end side which sounds like a pain but isn't at all.  I've knit this pattern so many times now, and I never stop loving how elegantly it produces a comfortable, attractive slipper that fits small into a bag for overnights or emergency room visits or just being warm at a friend's house after you take your shoes off to stay a while.

Carol also loves them - I think in part because of the time in winter she had an injury so bad they were the only socks she could get on for several days.  In fact she asked specifically for another pair this Christmas which makes me so grateful I kept notes on her first ones; she needs such an impossibly small size I can never quite believe they will fit an adult, but she tells me they are perfect so I know if I just follow the pencil marks on the pattern sheet, I'll be fine.

It's both useful and, to me, interesting that I have such notes.  Earlier this week I had a conversation with a friend which echoed the one I have with most friends and acquaintances after we haven't chatted in a while.  It goes sort of like this:

Them: So, are you still writing?

Me: Pretty much just my knitting blog every weekday.

Them: Your knitting what? (or, your what blog? or perhaps just, Oh.)

And then I explain, and they say that's great with varying degrees of sincerity depending only in part on whether or not they knit too.

Whatever the variation, this sequence always leads me back to one thought:

How on earth have I managed to find enough to say about knitting to keep up five posts a week for almost four years?

Because seriously, it's going to be four years in January.  Isn't that scary?  Sure, I knit, but I do lots of other things too (don't I?)  I can meet somebody and have an intelligent conversation about things not including textiles.  Though now that I think of it, I often do slip in some reference or other.

For example I failed to check myself at a party last month where I was chatting with a man and two women, the latter of whom turned out to be knitters, and the moment I ran to my purse to dig out my twined mittens to show them - I was actually handing one to the man so he could check out how soft they are - was the moment Trish walked into the house and caught me being nerdy, so maybe I can't not talk about knitting to people who don't knit, after all.

(I am pretty sure I would never catch Trish doing such a thing.  She would wait till the man had gone and then slip the mtts to the women who actually cared.)

So: maybe I can't suppress the passion for yarn.  Can you imagine what I'd be like if I didn't have a blog for an outlet?  Yikes - that is really scary.

As is the day I have planned, frankly, but it's Just One Day, and there will be knitting at the end of it, and that will be very nice indeed.  I hope there's knitting at the end of yours too! and I feel sure I will be back again tomorrow with more things to say because apparently I am a bottomless pit of knitting talk.

(aren't you lucky?)