birthday socks

Happy Mothers' Day to all the mothers out there. Mine has been busy. My own mother is here (and my father, too!) for a visit. It's been completely lovely, but I've been consumed with accompanying end-of-semester juries for music school students and helping run a fundraiser for my daughter's preschool (I managed to get us on the local news!! - and we actually raised $2500, not $25,000, but we still consider it a success). So the long and short of it is that my parents and husband have spent most of their time running the kids while I do freelance work and volunteer for the preschool.

All those things have nothing to do the socks pictured below. These are for my cousin Steph, whose birthday is coming up. 

I've had these socks OTN for months now, since last August according to my project page on Ravelry. These are my portable socks, easy 2x2 rib with a shortrow heel, that I took to places where I could handle mindless knitting. I kept putting them down for weeks at a time when I got caught up in test knitting and gift knitting and OMG Daniel lost a mitten and it's going to be 2 below zero tomorrow morning when we walk to school -knitting.

But the socks are done now, and have been sent to Steph in Kansas (where she surely doesn't need wool socks just now) along with a handmade card by my daughter, who is very keen on making cards in people's favorite colors (green and orange in this case, but I think she's okay with purple socks, too).

These socks were made with the last full skeins of Knitpicks Felici that I had stashed away. I bought a few colorways a while ago, and I like it okay. Felici is nice to knit with and washes well; I've made plenty of socks for my kids out of other colors that held up very nicely. But I'm through with Knitpicks, yo. They had this giant security breach a few months ago that was handled very poorly (I had a card number stolen and had to have it reissued, as a matter of fact.) Additionally, their entire product line and marketing strategy is based on getting lots of stuff for cheap prices, which in my opinion does a disservice to the millions of people on this planet who want to make a decent living but can't because so many people like me can't resist a good bargain. I'd rather save up and buy less yarn of better quality that is made in the US by people who are treated like human beings. (Also, I have so much yarn already that I'm knitting it rather than buying more.) Before I came to this conclusion, I bought a healthy quantity of their sport weight sock yarn, and I'm trying to decide if I want to make it all into winter socks for my family or just give it away and use something nicer. Thoughts on that, anyone?

All that said, these are nice socks. They should last a good long while for Steph, and the stripes are fun and not quite so matchy.

Pattern: Oh, I don't know. I cast on 68 and worked a 2x2 rib, did shortrow heels and a wedge tow with kitchener stitch. Is that really a pattern? You know what's sad? I have a whole pile of books on knitting socks and I hardly ever even use a pattern. Most of the time I go with plain old boring ribbed socks like these. Except these aren't boring, they're lovely.
Yarn: KP Felici fingering weight in blue/purple stripes
Needles: size 1 DPNs