An end to the Christmas knitting!

I present the Embossed Leaves Socks for my grandmother:

I realize they look a bit big, but my grandmother has bigger feet than I do! These are a belated Christmas gift. I have to sadly admit that I didn't even try to have them done by Christmas. I had good intentions, but, well, events conspired and in the end I gifted her one sock, which I promptly took back so I could make the second to match. I talked a lot about how hard I would work to finish them while I was still home over the holidays, but hardly any knitting was done, and so on and so forth, but they're done now and will be in the mail tomorrow.

Project Stats: Embossed Leaves Socks

Pattern source: Interweave Knits Winter 2005, pattern by Mona Schmidt

Yarn: Socks that Rock mediumweight in Beryl, almost a full skein

Needles: Knit Picks DPNs, size 2

Time to knit: 2 months? There was a quite a lag between the two socks, but once I got going they went pretty quickly.

Modifications: My row gauge was off so I subtracted half a pattern repeat at the toe, and did a standard decrease-on-both-sides-kitchner-toe (which surely has a more formal name but it's late and I'm not looking it up). I also didn't do the recommended cast-on, I just did a long-tail and then did the ribbing as instructed.

Impressions: Hum. This yarn and colorway was a perfect choice for this pattern. This pattern itself was pretty easy, and the results are lovely, but I really hate having the first stitch on a DPN be a purl, because I find it very difficult to keep those stitches tight, and laddering can result. This little problem was probably why these socks took me so long to knit, because I really didn't look forward to picking them up. However, the mental struggle was about 95% of the battle, because once I was knitting they were a very enjoyable knit. They are a bit big, and although my grandmother has larger feet than me I'm a bit worried. She'll probably wear them mostly around the house anyway though, so they'll probably be just fine. I really hope she likes them, and that she wears them. For all my gripping about the knitting, she deserves them and I'm very glad to gift them to her, even if they're belated!

Now I can start something new...we can talk about that at length tomorrow, or the next day. There may even be a poll involved!