It's Tour-de-Sock time again! Last summer I swore that I would never do it again, but by May I was just checking the schedule and yarn requirements, matching my stash with the sock schedule and not going to participate at all, and before I knew what I was doing, I had signed up for the competition.

The first round started on Saturday, July 15 at 2 PM. This was in the middle of a family vacation tour through the Baltic states and we were supposed to drive from Daugavpils in Latvia to Vilnius in Lithuania that day. I knew that I couldn't sit at the hotel and knit until the socks were finished, but I wanted to use the driving time for knitting. Luckily, the world's best playground is located in Daugavpils, so the rest of the family agreed to spend the morning in the park and head to Vilnius after lunch. I was able to read through the pattern before we left, and luckily it wasn't too complicated so knitting in the car was ok. I skipped the part of learning what Turkish cast on is, and used a more familiar one due to the circumstances. In Vilnius, I was able to knit a couple of hours more before going to bed.


Luckily, the pattern was easy to memorise, and I carried the socks with me, taking advantage of any playground stops or waiting times. Of course, I didn't get the socks done before leaving Vilnius, so there was more knitting time on the road, stopping in Trakai and Kaunas before arriving in Klaipeda. I managed to knit the easy parts during the day, and then for the unusual heel construction (afterthought leg - as in afterthought heel, except that here you knit the heel first and then pick up stitches for leg) and the fins on top of the cuffs I did in the evening at the hotel. The last fins I knitted on top of the Parnidis dune on the Curonian Spit, which, by the way, is one of the most amazing places I've seen. We stopped at a cafe to take pictures of the socks, and I tried to e-mail the pics and post them to TdS forum to claim my points. In the end, four days after the beginning of stage 1, I was 139th to finish. It didn't go that well, but I have to say that I'm happier for the day in Vilnius than I would have been for staying at the hotel and finishing earlier. Also, with the new point system it means that I still got 17 points. Let's see if that's going to be any good in the overall standing.