sockapalooza: February 2005 Archives

Christy hit the nail on the head when she said that I'm a ponderer. I've gone through 2 yarns and 5 patterns in order to settle on my sockapalooza sock.

I decided to go with Regia Cotton Surf in a bright stripe of yellow, orange, and dark pink.

Cotton Surf comes in big 100 g skeins (enough for a pair). I like the idea of only needing one skein, but I always feel cheated because I never know quite how much to use. After reading Sara's great post last week about a scale being your third most important yarn tool I decided to finally buy myself a postal scale. What fun! I weighed the ball (98 grams*), and wound off 48 grams (slightly less than half) onto my winder.

  

I've started the sock with the half I wound, knowing that even if my weights are off slightly I should definitely have a little less on the wound half than the half left in the skein.

Here's my progress as of last night.

I had a few false starts with this sock. I started with US 3's and had to go down to US 2's to get a good fabric. Now that I"m on the 2's I love the way the yarn feels! I picked the cotton since warm weather is on its way and I thought my pal would be able to use them more often in the cotton. The Cotton Surf is a superwash so they're easy care.

* Curious why the skein only weighed 98 grams instead of 100? Yarn weights can vary depending on atmospheric conditions. Yarn retains water, so if it's dry out (like now in the middle of winter with the heat blasting) the yarn will probably weigh a little less than say, August when it's 80% humid. To account for this you'll sometimes see "under standard conditions" listed on the ball band.

ps - If you haven't already done so, go see Vicki's amazing St. Brigid. It's gorgeous!