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.]

Last week was not all awfulness, since this package arrived for me in the mail. I have participated in the Favorite Things swaps on Ravelry before and am always excited to get packages filled with someone else’s favorite things in the mail.

Cassandra took great care of me, and I find we have many favorite things in common. She likes chocolate. I like chocolate. She likes tea. I like tea! She likes cookies — and really delicious oatmeal chocolate almond cherry cookies, at that. I like cookies and ate the whole package up! (Okay, I may have shared them with Rudi. He had a crappy week last week, too, after all.)

And, of course, we both like yarn. Cassandra sent me lovely indigo blue sock yarn made of merino, cashmere, and nylon that I believe she dyed herself. And then she sent me two patterns for socks to knit.

It really was a terrific package to receive last week when I was feeling so low. Thanks, Cassandra!

Today began with a lie-in. I didn’t get up until noon, which was just fine from my body’s perspective. I haven’t been feeling well this week and clearly my body thought we needed some more sleep.

After a hearty bowl of oatmeal and berries, we decided to forgo the chores we should be working on and instead go out and enjoy the sunshiny weather.

I called up Sarah and the three of us headed out to the Maryland “countryside” (really, it seemed more like less developed suburbs…) in search of cider doughnuts. Not only did we find them, but they were in such short supply that when we finally got them, they were fresh and hot!

Having accomplished that goal, we decided to see if we could find Sarah some unpasteurized cider. Because I prefer my cider hot and with cinnamon sticks, I don’t tend to notice the difference between raw cider and its pasteurized sibling. But Sarah prefers hers straight up and cold, where I imagine the difference is terribly noticeable.

We hit the road and headed south, trying to make what Google said would be a 70 minute drive into the 58 minutes before the farm stand closed. As we hit Olney town center, we knew all hope was lost. Feeling slightly dejected, when we passed a different farm stand, we decided to pull in to see if anything they had for sale could make up for the loss. They had a sign up for cider, so Sarah decided that it was better to have the processed cider than none at all and asked the girl for a half-gallon. Well, you could have heard our cries of joy up the road when the girl turned and asked if Sarah preferred pasteurized or non! We picked up a bottle, too, and are going to do a compare and contrast with some I bought last week at the farmers’ market.

After we dropped Sarah off to enjoy her cider with the lamb stew she had cooking in her crock pot, I suggested to Rudi that we should do our cat litter buying up in Columbia Heights and combine it with dinner at Pete’s. I haven’t had our favorite D.C. pizza in ages and it just felt like the right way to end a fun Saturday out.

Tomorrow, I’ll have to get some things done — I need to hit the garden, the tomato paste needs to be made, and a heap of laundry awaits my attention. But after a stressful week, it was nice to leave all our woes at home and just to go out in the car with friends in pursuit of some Northeast soul food.

It’s been a rough week here in the Burrow and I just haven’t really felt up to talking about it. But tradition is the sort of thing that shouldn’t be messed with, so here are the usual Thursday Three Beautiful Things from my week past:

1. It was obvious that Della was getting weaker and weaker and I confess that I spilled many tears both before and after taking her to the vet, anticipating from past experience that she would not be coming home. But with the help of a caring vet clinic, some fluids, and a number of medicines, we got a call Tuesday that said we could pick her up and bring her back to the Burrow. Rudi and I are not natural nurses, but we do love our eldest cat tremendously and she is forgiving of our awkwardness. The barrage of medicines doesn’t offer us forever, but they do offer us all some additional time together, which we plan to spend snuggling.

2. Crossing the Taft Bridge up to Woodley Park last night, I note that a few trees below me in Rock Creek Park are beginning to be tipped with yellow and one or two with red. The sun perches just atop those on the horizon before it slips behind them for the night.

3. I finish a knitting project and block it (stretch it out a bit to even out the stitches) on a dinner plate. It ends up looking as cool as I hoped it would, and my fingers are crossed that the recipient will like it, too.

It’s late, so we’ll mostly skip the preamble. Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. We have dinner with two high school friends of Rudi’s and their spouses. The friend who cooks dinner has two little girls, precocious and adorable. The older of the two girls, who’s seven, overhears us discussing the science of science fiction and asks for an explanation of tractor beams. When her mother is able to walk her through an admirable model that involved a tricycle, a jump rope, and a dump truck, I’m impressed. But when I remember Heather is a minister and chaplain at a local high school, I figure explaining Star Trek technology to a first-grader might be easy by comparison.

2. Rain is plinking down at bedtime a couple nights this week.

3. Jeans and long sleeves and knee highs and wool socks have made this week one filled with clothes I haven’t seen in a while.

What’s been beautiful in your world this week?

If you were going to knit a pair of two-color, knee-high, argyle socks, which two colors would you pick?