Yet another cast-on aka Knitting monogamy just isn't for me, baby.

Encouraged by the fact that I managed to complete the fiddlier part of the Southampton Soft and inspired by two posts I saw on Facebook (namely one by a local yarn shop announcing that the pre-order period for the Estonian version Niina Laitinen's third book, Villasukkien Uusi Vuosi, was being extended because the local publisher was experiencing some delays and the other one by a very local yarn dyer from the brand Woolmint announcing that she would have some freshly dyed yarns for sale this weekend), I decided to cast on a pair of socks from Niina's first book, Villasukkien Vuosi (The Year of Wool Socks). The pattern I chose is called Kuiske (Whisper) and the yarn I am using is Woolmint Opera - a fingering weight sock yarn in the colourway Orlando. I bought the yarn in August and the lady behind Woolmint was actually kind enough to deliver it to my workplace personally, because she was in the neighbourhood. Of course I want to support her again and place an order this weekend, so I thought this would be the perfect chance to put Orlando to good use and knit one of Niina's older patterns while waiting for the new book.

Anyway. The pattern calls for 2.5 mm needles and I actually wanted to try the Magic Loop method with these socks, but it ended up being a fail, because my 2.5 mm circular needles have a really long cable (I believe they're 100 cm in length) so instead of forming just the one magic loop, the cable formed like two or three and it was kind of a mess. I also remembered that Niina's patterns are written for DPNs and they are often rather specific about the amount of stitches you should have on each needle - they require you to do some shuffling around from time to time, which would've been a bit hard to do using the Magic Loop. Not to mention that I also remembered that her socks often tend to be quite narrow and I had to cast on the Pride and Prejudice socks like three times because my leg wouldn't fit through the ribbing. In the end, I went with 3.5 mm DPNs.

This is where I am now: 

How gorgeous is this colour though!