Mmmmm....Cookies

I am proud to present my first ever Cookie A socks! These socks represent a breakthrough of the Cookie A barrier. I never thought that I would make anything by this designer. Let me make it clear, I have her books. I love her designs. Looking at them puts me in something resembling a trance, and I can flip through the pages staring at the glossy photos for an almost endless length of time. Unfortunately, her patterns have always scared the heck out of me. The same lacy, flowy, parts of her socks, the part with the beautiful spirals or cabling, the parts that make me think, “my god those are gorgeous I would love to have a pair of those,” are also the same things that make me want to go screaming into the night when I think about knitting them. I had a failed attempt with Valia a while back. I cast-on and knit the first 10 or so rounds and then they got tossed into the knitting basket where they sat untouched until I frogged them last month. I decided that maybe I was taking the wrong approach to the whole Cookie A thing. I decided to start simpler. I went through her designs until I found a pair of socks that would build my confidence as opposed to causing me anxiety. And I found them in her BFF socks.

The simple repeat of ribbing and cabling produce a lovely easy to follow knit. And though I did find the cable decreases a little tricky, I pushed through. I had a brief moment of anxiety when I was picking up the gusset stitches since Cookie does not actually state how many stitches should be picked up, she simply says to “pick up each slipped stitch.” I realized this is actually brilliant and I now plan to substitute this technique into all my sock knitting. At one point my husband came and sat beside me, watched me knit for a few minutes, asked to see my progress as a whole. (I proudly showed him the sock to that point.) He looked me straight in the face and said “huh, I thought you said her socks are hard to knit.”

And that really is the point, isn't it. Sometimes it's just a matter of finding the right pattern and being in the right frame of mind. But, as my BFF and knitting guru has said to me many times before, if you can do the knit stitch and the purl stitch, you can make anything. And while am the first to admit that there are still patterns that I am not ready to try, it is not because I lack the skill, I lack the time and more realistically the patience.

I have just turned the heel on my first pair of Kia-Me. It is again, not an overly difficult pair of Cookies, but it is a pair that I have wanted since I first saw the book. I'm not sure what pair I will jump to after those are finished. But I guarantee there will be more. I have the Cookie A bug. I am happy and so are my feet.