Alison's Angel and Jean's Socks

I thought I ought to show y'all some of the knitting progress to date. First of all, you might recall my comments about Alison and her battle with a nasty and unforgiving set of chronic illnesses. Well, Elizabeth has come up with the fabulous idea of a group project to make a comfort blanket for Alison. She's invited the world to send her 5" squares of washable fiber, which she kindly has agreed to assemble and deliver to Alison. Fairly simple instructions, right? Well, I picked out a pattern (originally for a washcloth) of a healing angel, which seemed appropriate, and got to work with size 3 needles and some decadent fingerling merino that I knew Alison would appreciate. The blocked result is shown at right; neither square, nor precisely 5". (More like 5" x 6".) Oops. And when I went back to Elizabeth's instructions, I realized that I had used a fiber which is not superwash, but which would require respectful handling. Double-oops. I contacted Elizabeth, who said that knitters are non-conformists anyway and size variation was to be expected. She's hesitant about the merino, but I guess I'm going on faith that a woman who routinely works with truly fabulous and somewhat delicate fibers will be able to deal with it. In the end, it's all about faith anyway, right?

Meanwhile, I've been asked to make some socks for Dad's lady friend. Not my normal heavy wool boot socks, obviously, but some light socks from fine gauge yarn. This is what might kindly be termed an "area of growth" for me; I tried making such socks a while back with some of the computer-printed yarn, and got so bored out of my head by the endless stockinette and glacial pace of progress that I frogged the whole thing. The re-wound yarn has been sitting, dejected and lonely, in my stash ever since. But, life is about growth and exploring new directions, so at Dad's request I thought I'd try again. It's still boring, but that's mainly my fault for sticking to a very basic recipe this first time out. And the yarn is a 70% wool superwash with aloe finish put out by our old friends Red Heart. I have to say that I thought the variations in color would be more exciting once knat up; so far, the thing just isn't that dramatic. I'm considering adding some colorwork - maybe a wolf or coyote in dark colors, so it becomes reminiscent of a silhouette against an evening sky. Anyone know of such a chart that is only 20 stitches or so wide?