I had not realized that it had been so long since I had been here.  I loathe winter.  With the fiery passions of a thousand suns…the ones that never seem to shine from January to March.  I get a serious case of Seasonal Affective Disorder, and I just want to curl up in a ball and do nothing until spring.

I think this year, I thought it would be different.  I had this romantic notion of being back in my home province, in my own house, with snow falling gently outside while I knit and spin and accomplished so much through the cold winter.  Yeah…no.  I did some knitting and some spinning, to be sure.  And my brain went on a short design binge (none of which have been actually knit or written up yet), but otherwise my creativity did hit somewhat of a wall.

Last month, my dear friend Val sent me a box filled with yarn goodies, mostly in bright/spring-y colours.  The box included a gorgeous skein of Socks That Rock in a colour called “Hope Springs Eternal”.

When I was going on a two week business trip last month and needed a project to take on about 20 hours of flying and lots of hotel room evenings, I used it to cast on another pair of Hermione’s Everyday Socks.  This pattern, along with my own Petty Harbour pattern, are my go-to I-don’t-have-to-think sock patterns.

After kitchenering the first toe at the end of week one, with a 14 hour trip home still in the offing, I was worried.  There was suddenly a real possibility that I’d run out of yarn.

Kitchenering a sock at 37000 feet somewhere over Colorado, as one does…

Now since no one, I thought foolishly, knits a pair of socks in two weeks, I had failed to bring along any other yarn.  My friend, Shireen, to the rescue!  She lovingly brought me a skein of SweetGeorgia Tough Love Sock…JUST in case.

What I did not count on was 1) how super busy conferences can be, especially when my company is hosting and 2) that I would get a cold that would pretty much lay me flat every minute that I wasn’t scheduled to be somewhere.

So when I did get home, I was not quite done the second sock…just a few repeats short of the toe.  And I felt so crappy that it took me a couple of more evenings to finish them off.

So now, I have lovely new spring socks.  And if you’ve ever encountered spring in Newfoundland, you know that they are likely to be worn at least a few times before they are put away for the season.