Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Wow, is it a gorgeous day in Galway! Spring is here at last. Everybody was out walking the prom this afternoon, wearing big goofy green hats and tri-color feather boas and eating ice cream. I sat on the strand at very low tide and wiggled my bare toes in the wet sand. Forgot how good that feels!

Here's how else I celebrated Paddy's Day:

These are socks for a Ravelry contest—the Irish-themed project with the most 'love' clicks wins a huge stash of yarn (including a kilo of Kilcarra, which is one of my favorites). Tá áthas orm means "There is joy upon me" in Irish (so I guess these socks just say "joy upon me"). They're my reminder to count my blessings in these uncertain times.

I used sock yarn I picked up in Munich in December—Wolle Rödel, really inexpensive, a great value—and knit these socks using bits I remembered from other patterns. I cast on 60 stitches, did a purl ridge twice during the extra-long ribbing, and increased to 64 stitches for the colorwork at the ankle. Decreasing back to 60 stitches before the heel flap, I just knit a 'vanilla sock' until 8 or so rounds before the toe decreases should start. I had charted the words in an Excel spreadsheet, and that worked out well. I did a checkerboard pattern around the back to carry the yarn, trapping the second strand where necessary, and started the dark-green toe earlier on the right sock since the letters weren't as tall. It was quite an easy project, considering I was more or less designing them on the fly!

Ravelry link (with more photos) here.