3 posts tagged “sock a month kal”
Here are my May socks. Aren't they pretty?
The way my participation in the Sock a Month kal has gone is as such: February pair- my pink birthday socks. March pair- tan socks with a diagonal rib for my husband. April socks- those nice pumpkin colored socks with the pattern from the Vogue cable stitchionary for me. Given that pattern, one would deduce that the May pair of socks would be for my husband, right?
Wrong.
Originally the May socks were going to be Husband socks, nifty grey ones made from pretty charcoal colored skeins of Wildfoote. I gave him the first Vogue knitting stitchionary and instructed him to pick out some patterns he liked and we'd figure out how to turn them into socks. After some debate, we came up with a neat diamond pattern and I started knitting. And then I ripped out what I'd done because I messed up enough of the pattern. I restarted. Then I ripped it out a third time when I realized that the width looked like it wouldn't even fit around my leg. Third time was indeed the charm and I knit the leg and put a heel on the sock. I started the foot and that's when I realized I'd made the same mistake that I made with my pumpkin colored socks- I forgot to mark the beginning of the pattern repeat so I'd know where to start knitting again. *facepalm
By this point it was May 20th and I knew I'd have to haul ass if I wanted to get my May socks in, so I went to my stash for inspiration. I happened to see the three balls of yarn I'd gotten to knit the Elfine pattern, like a year or so ago when I was in my pink and green phase. I had the yarn, I had a pattern, I was good to go. Only, not so much.
First off, the yarn I had was a three ply cotton yarn (I think, I lost the yarn bands when I wound it) in strands of pink, green and white. It knit up too thick for socks, so I got the bright idea of pulling off the white strand as I knit. Yeah. That led to a lot of tangling. Fortunately, it meant I had to cut the white strand a couple times, so I had plenty of yarn when I hit snag number two, the heel. The heel itself knit up nicely. Let's look at the heel, shall we?
Yeah. The heel's white. Why is that? Like I said, I lost the ball bands, so I didn't know how much yarn I had. When I got to the heel I realized I had about a third of the ball left. I had three balls of this yarn, so I was guessing finishing these socks was a crap shoot. That's why I made the executive decision to do the heels with the white yarn I was discarding- it bought me a little more time. You'll also notice the top of the sock has a white band. That's because it didn't buy me enough time.
I finished sock number one no problem and started sock number two. I did the heel, still fine, and thought yeah, it might be tight but I'll have enough yarn to finish. I worked my way up the leg and started constantly questioning if I really was going to have enough yarn. Tonight I had my answer. To quote the sheriff on the BBC show Robin Hood (who, amazingly enough, is Lily Allen's dad! The Husband and I have fun doing our own imitations of life in the Allen household, but I digress), "A clue: no." I made it all the way through row three, instead of row 8 where I was supposed to end, then decided I should probably bind off and I'd be lucky if I had an inch of yarn left. Ha! I made it halfway around the sock before I ran out of yarn.
Inspiration did strike, though, while I was looking at the socks. I took the white yarn I'd discarded from the skein and finished binding off, then did a single crochet in the stitches at the top of both socks so the top of the socks were both white. So there you go.
All complaining aside, I really liked this pattern. It knit up really fast, which was good, given that time was of the essence. This was the first time I did socks toe up, so that was a new experience. It was supposed to be toe up on two circs, but I didn't want to take the time to figure that out and besides, I don't own two pair of size three circs so there you go. I'm definitely going to try more toe up patterns and who knows? Maybe I'll go out, get two circs and try that too.
These are also the socks I started when we saw the Yarn Harlot. I joked that this month's kal entry was going to be "Dear left sock, You will lead a charmed sock life, for you have been blessed by the Yarn Harlot!" I got most of the leg knitted for the left sock while we were there, because we got there at noon and she spoke at two, plus I knitted in line waiting for her to autograph my book.
It always gets interesting when you try and put a stitch pattern on a basic template. This month's interesting things were that on sock #1, I didn't really think to mark the beginning of the round when I started the heel. I totally forgot that the stitch pattern didn't end neatly at the end of the needle, so when I started the foot, I realized oh crap! The pattern's not lining up! I had to do some figuring to get back on track, and when I tried the sock on for length, that's when I realized I'd really like it if the pattern spread over the sides of my feet a little. Oh well. I figured that all out when I knit the second sock and chalked it up to, "Well, now I'll know which sock the Yarn Harlot held in the picture." Also, about halfway in on the second sock I lost my cable needle in the couch, so I knit all the rest of the cables onto a spare double point. I can cable without the needle, I just prefer not to when it comes to tinier yarn.
Remember how I mentioned that I'd originally picked the swatch to be socks for the Husband? Well, when I tried both socks on after I finished them, the Husband took a look and said, "Those look really nice! Can I have a pair too?" He really liked the stitch pattern and the color, so I'm going to have to get more yarn and make him some later. Speaking of the stitch pattern, let's get a look at that.
Here are the sock particulars.
Yarn: Knit Picks Essential, in Pumpkin, two skeins. I needed almost all two skeins. When I finished sock number one, I had enough yarn left to do almost all the ribbing on sock number two. I'll probably have to get a third skein to do the Husband's but cabling usually takes extra yarn, so there you go.
Pattern: Waves, out of the Vogue Knitting Stitchionary #2, Cables
I knit these on 2s. Normally I knit all my socks on 3s, but I thought the fabric looked too loose on 3s.
Until last week I'd only ever knitted one thing for the Husband, and we've been married/I've known how to knit for three years. Yeah. That's a million sweaters for me, tons of things for other people- mittens and baby blankets, mostly- and one measly pair of socks for him. Let's see how I managed to rectify the situation.
Here are the mechanics of the socks:
Yarn- Knit Picks Palette, color is Twig, two skeins. Yes, I got cheap Palette for my Husband's socks and at the same time bought myself the slightly nicer Essential. I am a horrible wife.
Needle size- 3. I do pretty much all my socks on 3s, but not the pair I'm doing now and using the aforementioned Essential. 3s make the fabric too loose.
