As you know, Thursday means it’s time for Three Beautiful Things from the past week:

1. Birds make funny noises as they splash in the ever-present puddle near the community garden. They sound like a hand-cranked egg beater.

2. Lilacs, poppies, peonies, and roses bloomed this week. These are not some of Mother Nature’s shyer children.

3. Twenty years ago, I was just finishing up seventh grade. I was at that particular age when a movie can become part of the intrinsic fabric of your life, and for me, that movie was Dirty Dancing. Last night they brought the movie back to the big screen (I saw it on video with my parents the first time around) and added a new documentary that interviewed some of the people (not the stars) responsible for creating the movie and highlighted the stage show production. Sweetpea, her roommate, a couple other people, and I headed over to the wilds of Virginia to sink back into teenaged nostalgia for a night. Yes, the movie is a bit cheesy, but that’s fine. (And, Sweetpea, Patrick Swayze was 35 and Jennifer Grey was 27 when the film came out.) Going to see it in a theater filled with women in their 30s and late 20s really did make for a fun experience. It was a fantastic night. Not quite the time of my life, but you understand…

Stay tuned for another post later today featuring a whole box of beautiful things from Emily. I wrote the post last night but hit a wall before I could put the links in to the photos. I’ll remedy that after work!

I wanted to share photos of the socks I sent off to my Bloomin Feet pal earlier today. They may now be the knitted object I am most proud of having made.

The socks are made from Woolarina yarn, a local vendor I adore. The yarn is a 50-50 merino-tencel blend in the Kelp colorway, and the photos really don’t convey how lovely the shine is or how much the yarn reminds me of the sea. The pattern is the Zokni Sock from Minty. I had a hard time getting gauge, so the sock was knit on three different needle sizes — 3mm for the leg, 2.75mm for the foot, and 2.25mm for the heel flap, heel turn, and toe.

Other than messing with needle size, the only change I made to the pattern was altering the short-row heel to be an eye-of-partridge heel flap. The pattern is a detailed one, as you can see below, but I think the variegated yarn really suited it.

Someone who has yet to receive her Bloomin Feet package will be the new owner of these socks — and I hope she will like them as much as I do. I will definitely be making myself a pair of these in the future.

I have to say that this was a lot of fun to do, even if I was quite nervous at each stage of the game — picking out a yarn I thought my pal would like, finding a pattern to suit the yarn, and trying to make a sock fit a far-off foot I’ve never met. Thanks, Amanda, for hosting another fun exchange and for inviting me to take part.