Feeling the loss of the Toasty Toes and Bloomin’ Feet swaps a few close friends and I decided to make a teensy swap of our own. Socks are due April 1st so we’ve named it the Silly Sock Swap. As is usual, I agonized over yarn and pattern choice before casting on. I poured over what seemed to be hundreds of patterns, ordered yarn and then deemed it unsuitable when it arrived. I chance pattern coming across the favorites list on Ravelry sent me in the Fair Isle direction and suddenly things began to click. Earlier in the week I went to wind yarn in preparation for casting on only to realize the "perfect" blue yarn I’d selected wouldn’t work so I yanked out the "unsuitable" yarn I’d ordered and pressed it back into service. It’s a wee bit thin for this pattern but it does seem to work. I first saw the Tongue River Sock booklet (scroll down, it’s second on the list) in fall of ’05 on my first visit to Rhinebeck only to oggle it twice more before breaking down and purchasing it. This is the perfect excuse to break it out and get over my fear of the patterns. The sock construction is a wee bit different from my usual MO in that there is no heel flap at all and gussets are formed by increasing along either side of the instep in the round after which you knit a short-row heel flat and rejoin in the round for the foot. The short row thing puts me off as I once tried to do a short row toe and got a purl ridge on one side. It’s long past time to conquer that short row thing.