Bonnet & Sock

Did you all have a lovely Easter weekend? I sure hope so. We had beautiful warm weather that enticed me out for longer than usual walks and gave me an opportunity to try out, not exactly an Easter Bonnet, but a new hat for hiking. I don't usually buy hats without trying them on first, but this one looked good in the catalogue and is made from a UV protective fabric rather than straw like my other hats. Really wanted something for between stocking hats/ear warmers and straw hats. Not keen on the straight-on view but it probably looks fine to anyone else and the wide brim give good protection.

 

And for Sunday brunch, I'd succumbed to these luscious looking walnut caramel cinnamon rolls from my grocery store's bakery. They were just as good as they looked.

 

Taxes are getting there, wrapping up the Federal ones that I do with TurboTax software. They made a lot of changes in how it looks moving from screen to screen and a specific change in one part where I have to manually add information on my many investment transactions, the main reason I use tax software. These are the redemptions that provide what I live on each month, otherwise I probably wouldn't have to file at all. Anyway, I ended up on the website to discover others were questioning how to enter info as we've always entered it and that they'd been unable to file because of this obvious bug. The complaints ran through February but the issue had since apparently been fixed. Once I learned where to enter my info, I had no problems getting through to the end, which left me thinking, sometimes procrastination actually pays off! Now on to the state taxes which are simple enough not to need software help.

 

And yes, I was still procrastinating through the week, to the point I picked up the sock knitting again. I was farther along when I last put it down than I remembered so it wasn't long until I was binding off and hoping that I didn't do that too soon, that both socks were the same length. So much dawdling, so many frustrating moments, so many mistakes had left me with very mixed feelings about these socks. I do like them, generally speaking, just not how I had to make them.

 

The directions did say the starting tail thread at the toe might need to be pulled up to close holes. And yes, I have a hole to fix in the toe.

 

But there are also holes in the heel-turn to fix (down by my thumb and to the left of my finger where the stitches make a right angle turn). I don't think I ever "got" exactly what was going on there with the stitch used to increase and decrease to make the turn.

 

However, I do like the 2 x 2 ribbing, and they sure are warm and comfy. I want to make the knee high version because I think with that ribbing they would stay up well. I even stopped by one of the yarn shops in the area to see what was available in sock yarn, commiserating with the owner over my struggles, only to have her say, "And you're going to make another pair with this pattern?" Well, yes and no. I've already perused other patterns with different ways to start at the toe and turn the heel (yes, when I should have been working on taxes!), and will substitute a different method when the time comes.