Finished socks!

I've been holding out on you all. These have been finished since Monday and worn twice in the cold weather... and I finally got a chance to photograh them in daylight just now:

Pattern: just a simple cable with ribs over 60 stitches
Yarn: Mega Boots Stretch in... some colorway... the cats (quite literally) ate the ball band so I'm not sure what it is
Needles: K-P size 1 (2.5mm), magic loop

They're very comforting colors; just as Teri S. of the comments said, they're very soothing colors. Since the blues and I seem to be agreeing with each other these days, I dove in to my stash to find this yarn from my most recent birthday:

Ah, easy knitting in shades of blue. (You can see a finished pair of this colorway over at Sheepish Annie's blog.) I've been doing a lot of reading lately for my historiography exam, which means I sometimes also am knitting. Further, we watched The Ten Commandments on Wednesday night for class, so that meant I got, oh, 3 hours and 40 minutes of knitting time, meaning massive sock progress! Stockinette socks are good for that.

Darker days of January

Well, we're definitely not in Panama anymore, Toto. The sky is dark and grey; it's raining, it's way under 80 degrees out, I'm sick with some bug, and I'm knitting socks. I'll give you the bad-and-ugly before the good explicit knitting content.

Luckily, it doesn't appear to be some sort of dangerous tropical bug, thank goodness. Nor is it the flu, or else I'd have to get mad at the futility of the flu vaccine I took a few weeks ago. Perhaps it's whatever our dinner hosts last Sunday night in Panama had. Or perhaps it's one of the more common gastrointestinal ailments that affects travelers in less developed parts of the world. I won't go into the yuckier details except to say that it involved a low fever and some gastrointestinal ickiness that sacked me out on the couch last night, alternately sleeping and knitting a bit of the Clapster. Thankfully, I'm feeling a bit better today and am sitting up, back to work, a new-born parrot-colored sock lying in wait next to my work.

Speaking of socks, I've joined a knit-along - Socktopia!

It runs for the whole year and features knitting socks each month that are geared towards three creative themes. January's are "celebrate good times," "blue monday," and "snowflakes and starry skies." I think that the new socks fall in the "celebrate good times," seeing as they're so bright and remind me of vacationing in Panama. Definitely not "blue monday" socks, which suggest something moodier to me. In this KAL, socks posted to the Flickr website by the end of the month are entered into a drawing for prizes. It should be a fun way to knit from my sock yarn stash, connect with other sock knitters, and learn new patterns, tips, and tricks!

Knitpicks Options update
While I was away, Knitpicks sent my replacement needles and replacement cords. I now have 3 functioning size 5 needles and 3 functioning 24" cords. This is great! Rather than send only 1 replacement cord to replace the 1 that didn't work, they sent a pack of 2, giving me a total of 3! I can now say that their customer service for replacing malfunctioning needles is excellent. One caveat - my needle set was a gift, and initially they sent the replacements to the giver's home, rather than to me (this despite the needles being sent directly to me). So if you ever have to do this, be sure your replacements are going to the right place.