Tuesday, 9 October 2007

And then there were two.....

Finished object alert.......


Well, my first finished sock has a sister now!

Some statistics:

Yarn - Colinette Skye in shade Neptune, two skeins
Needles - 3.75 addi turbo lace (these have featured a lot in my life recently)
Pattern - Made it up with advice from several google searches.
Cast on - last week!
Cast off - just now (again)


So that I have it written down somewhere.....

Cast on 20 stitches using judy's magic cast on. This was the first time that I have ever used it (my last abortive sock had a short row toe which had gaping holes down the side and was the reason that I never got beyond mid sole) and it is an invention of shear genius. Quick, simple, easy to remember and oh sooooo effective.

Then increased 4 stitches every other row 5 times, until there were a total of 40 stitches.

Gusset - increase 2 stitches every other row 9 times. This is more than average as a proportion of the total stitches but I seem to have fat ankles. Next time I might try more.

Heel..... guess! They are both subtly different, but worked in slip stitch. Next time I will take more of a note as I am going along because I have no idea now.

Then work 2 inches, and start increasing every 5th row.


See - pretty increases to fit round my bulging calf's! I would say fat calves, but they are the one bit of me that is actually mostly muscle, we do quite a bit of cycling and walking. After 10 lots of increases, start rib until the wool has nearly run out.

I cast off the second sock so many times. The first one I just did a standard cast off loosely and while it looked fine on, was very saggy when the sock was taken off. Resorting to my Knitters Handbook and deciding against a sewn bind off I tried one that involved decreasing stitches. Not quite stretchy enough. So armed with a needle I started off on my first attempt at a tubular bind off in double rib. It said I should be good at grafting (I am not) and able to do it with single rib (have never attempted) but I thought that after a glass of wine it would all be fine. And I am quite proud of myself - it's not 100% even but for a first attempt it's ok. And the actual method is again pure genius, neat, stretchy and so much less obvious than any other method.


I still might sew soles on these, but at the moment I am enjoying wearing them too much to bother (and I need to try and figure out where I can get some suitable leather, or decide to sacrifice some jeans or something).

I have nothing on my needles and I'm not sure what is coming next. Unusual for me, but the intense concerntration at the end of this project meant that I had no time to daydream about what was coming next.

Either a malabrigo jumper for me, or something out of rowanspun 4-ply or the black man jumper. Who know's which way the wind will blow!

2 comments:

Linda said...

They are fab! Isn't it great knitting the first pair, well done!

yarnsnob said...

ooh they look really warm and snug, lovely