When I came up with my goal of finishing five pairs of socks during Socktoberfest ’10, I didn’t know we were going to end up with a sick cat and that it was going to send me into an emotional tailspin. I might also have forgotten that I needed to make a homemade item for a swap. Oops.

But the good thing about a recurring event and setting yourself up for a win is that you can have finished knitting a pair of socks but not yet have woven in the ends and if you save that part for the first few days of October, you have successfully completed a pair of socks during Socktoberfest.

Ahem.

Anyway…

I have been knitting these socks off and on since mid-May. I know I knit on the first one during ALA in June. I had the second one in progress when I was last in Connecticut in August.

The pattern is Badcaul and the yarn is Dicentra Designs in Solar Energy, both of them sent to me by Carola as part of the Yarn Aboard 2 swap back in 2006. The yarn held up remarkably well to being frogged at least twice in my earlier attempts to knit this cabley pattern.

Those of you who were at Conn back in the first half of the ’90s may find they remind you of something. I tried to track down a photo of Spot, Min’s striped van, but didn’t have any luck. Suffice it to say, there is more than a passing resemblance in the colors.

[Finally, thanks to Natasha Brenchley, who created this year’s Socktoberfest banner and is letting folks use it for their blog posts.]