Mr. Karen and I went to Illinois for Thanksgiving weekend. On the day itself, the two of us celebrated with much food and many relatives—the extended family gathering this year was around 30 people. The rest of the weekend, we split up, Mr. Karen staying with his folks while I went to spend time with my mom. She’s stronger than she was the last time I visited, so that was encouraging. Some language things are still giving her trouble, especially numbers and dates, but she manages to work around those areas pretty well. We ran some errands (including braving a couple of Black Friday sales, though not first thing in the morning, thank goodness—that would have been too much for me, I think, much less Mom) and just generally hung out. I did work on my knitting some, finally finishing the socks I started last year at Thanksgiving.

These are the same socks I posted about last December, when I was just about to rip out the heels and redo them. I did indeed do that, though in the months since, I’ve come to the conclusion that while short row heels are easier for me to knit and look more like a commercial sock, flap heels seem to fit my feet better, so if I were in the same situation today, I’d probably not just redo the heels but restructure them. Or maybe not, because I do find heel flaps rather fiddly. I’ve also decided for striped socks, I’d rather have the increases at the sides of the toes. These are such simple socks that I didn’t use a pattern, just referred to the Queen Kahuna Book when needed. I hadn’t brought the book along for Thanksgiving, though, so when it was time to do the bind off, I Googled “stretchy bind off” on my phone and found Jeny’s surprisingly stretchy bind-off on the Knitty site and used that. It worked out quite well, so I think I’ll use that one again.

I haven’t decided on my next knitting project yet. Ski season is coming up fast, which means travel, which means it’d be good to have something not too big or difficult on the needles. Socks seem like a logical choice, but I’m not sure I’m up for socks again so soon. Maybe I’ll fondle through my sock yarn stash later this week and get inspired.