First Foot

Happy New Year! Some time between last year and this, or more precisely between the last post and this, I learned a bit about the hitherto-unknown-to-me New Year's Day custom of First Foot. I suppose it's quaintly traditional, but I'm rather dubious about the notion of waiting for a tall, dark, handsome man bearing gifts to cross my threshold. While some people may be lucky in life...

Or view here.

... generally I've had to make my own luck. So I cast on my "first foot."



I'm loving this pattern, Winter Garden by Betsy Lee McCarthy in Knit Socks! (The hardcover edition is shaped like a sock, which makes it surprisingly difficult to turn the pages; the paperback edition not only is a more practical shape for a book, it also includes more patterns.) As I have Not Enough Yarn to make striped socks per the pattern and as I want more black socks anyway, I am hereby officially omitting the stripes.

While I'm at it, my official fiber goal for 2012 is more garments. I hesitate to set a precise number – that approach seems doomed to failure. But for a blog called Jersey Knitter, there hasn't been a whole lot of jersey knitting going on and this seems like the year to remedy that.