Spent a little time working on socks these past weeks, but a lot more more time tatting.  Tatting definitely is more portable, though I suppose needle tatters, like sock knitters, have long weapons emerging from their work punching holes in whatever it's carried in.  But the socks are getting there slowly.  I've finished 1 1/2 pairs and managed to lose half a sock, the one I was pushing myself to work on because I liked it the least!  But a few tatting ideas have been floating around, and I came up with this one, which is in the current tatting times.
  I'd been thinking about all the canning I might not be doing this year, and used the Wandering Wheels technique to make some peaches and plums; I could also have used pink for spiced crab apples and yellow-green for bread and butter pickles, and white for pickled onions (which I don't make) and red for tomatoes, although they tend to be smooshed in the jar to the point of losing their shape, you'd definitely see red and think tomatoes!  This was fun and I plan on doing more of them!

This is an embarrassing blog to write.  I've begun cleaning my studio, after an extended recuperation from two surgeries - the big one, a more-complicated-than-garden-variety knee replacement, was planned, the other was a surprise - and discovered, to my horror seven - count-em - SEVEN! started pairs of knitted socks.  In this instance, "pairs" is an imaginary number because they're mostly only about 1/5 of one sock done.  For someone who insists she finishes every project this is, well, you know?  Through July I've instituted "sock Mondays" at the shop and I'm going to put in some concentrated work on these.  I THINK I've found them all, but still, that's an entire wardrobe of socks, and worse, the seventh pair is one I began in honor of sock Mondays, selectively forgetting about the other six.    And it's not as though socks are the only things on my mind - I've got a lot of tatting I've been itching to work on, now that my mind has partially returned from its sojourn with heavy painkillers.  However,  a setback with the knee put me on a course of an almost lethal dosage of Tylenol, so I've been sock-knitting today,  listening to a book on tape and changing projects with every chapter.  If I had a photo to include, it would be one of the large basket now containing all my (sock) projects separated into big plastic bags.  Some progress has now been made.  A few of the projects are now about 1/2 of one sock done.  And you can imagine my red face as I dis-interred the seventh pair, thinking, "what in the world...?"  If I get at least some of these done, I'll be able to limp along next winter on very well-dressed feet!