Sock Madness, the sock knitting competition I enter each March and rarely advance through the play-in round, commenced on Saturday with the pattern Senbonzakura by Natalia Vasilieva. It has smocked stitches and beads and twisted stitches meant to create an overall effect of cherry trees in spring.

I’m using a skein of Hobbledehoy sock yarn in the colorway “Crosswords,” which I’m finding to be a pleasantly round, bouncy yarn. It tolerates the tiny crochet hook I use to add beads well. The beads are blue-tinted with a silver core and they were the best of the batch I had on hand against the variegation and red undertones (overtones?) of the yarn.

(You can see the four Rudi and I gave serious consideration to. The clear ended up not being right, the blue was just too blue, the red was matte and I didn’t love it as much as I wanted, and then there’s the silvery blue I picked.)

And, yes, I am already significantly behind where I should be if I want to advance. It’s great if I move on and also fine if I don’t. Either way, I should have a great pair of socks at some point.

I started From the Desk of Zoe Washington by Janae Marks this evening. It’s a middle-grade novel about a girl who, on her 12th birthday, gets a letter from her birth father in prison. It’s the first one she’s ever received from him, but his letter suggests there have been others through the years. I look forward to finding out what happens next.

Head over to As Kat Knits to see what others are reading and crafting.