Brainy Brainless

At Christmas I had an unwanted visitor: Shingles. This is the left over virus from childhood chicken pox that lies dormant in your system until you get run down, at which time it will climb up a nerve of it's choice in your body and attack! Mine chose a nerve on my head. Gross. Most of the time the Shingles virus will make you feel crappy and the rash itself will hurt. Thankfully I felt pretty normal and although it hurt to touch I wasn't in the habit of touching my head all the time and so the pain wasn't really an issue. 

The major down side was that, although I couldn't give people Shingles, I could give people chicken pox if they hadn't had it before and so Christmas was cancelled for me and my two lovely Nephews. It was pretty crushing as I sent the Mr and Flo off to my Mums to open presents and have Christmas dinner with the Nephews and the rest of my family, but I was determined not to let it get me down and so spent the quiet time at home to it's best advantage winding yarn and starting a new project. With a glass of fizz to accompany me of course. 

And here are the finished socks! The pattern is called Brainless which I took to mean - a pattern I could do easily without using my brain. However this was an entirely wrong assumption. The pattern kicks off with Judy's magic cast on, which required me to have a YouTube refresher. Then there was the cabling to contend with, the curious gusset, a new method of turning the heel, more cables and topping it all off was Jenny's surprisingly stretchy cast off which again I needed refreshing on!

The first sock didn't go as well as the second, as indeed I learned a lot doing that first sock. As a consequence there are inconsistencies in the cables, increases and borders between the two socks. But I don't really care. They still look cool.