socks!: 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!

The socks are done!

Specs

Pattern: No real pattern. Tubular cast on, an inch of 1x1 rib, 5 inches of 2x2 rib, plain stockinette for an inch, Japanese short-row heel and a basic toe with the last few decreases done every row.
Yarn: Lion Brand Wool-Ease
Gauge: 5.5 spi -- much tighter than what's specified. This makes a nice dense sock that's still cushy and warm.
Needles: 2 Addi Turbo 4 mm (US #6) Circulars

They're warm. I'm a happy knitter!

Mariah

The official kickoff for the KAL was yesterday. I've done about 4 inches on the sleeve but something is bothering me. The pattern specifies keeping the selvedge stitches in garter. I don't usually do this but I thought I'd give it a try. I don't like the look though.

Then I realized this may actually make mattress stitching much more difficult -- right? So, I'm considered frogging this bit of progress and just doing a regular selvedge. If anyone has a better idea or a comment on the garter edge please let me know.

Blocking Wires

So I'm defintiely obsessed with lace now, and it's no longer a question of when I'll start another lace project but rather which one. I don't think I'll last past this weekend!

Since I had trouble finding a large enough spot for the Hanging Vines scarf I was considering blocking wires. But the longest wire I could find is 36 inches. Do you overlap them when the item is longer? I've searched around the major lace knitting sites I knew of -- Heartstrings and Fiddlesticks for example -- as well as checking out A Gathering of Lace. I can't find any example of blocking larger scale pieces with the wires. Is there a better way?