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Wednesday 17 October 2012

Mischief Managed

Today , dear reader, I have more socks for you. There has been a lot of sock knitting while I was away.

Yarn: The Yarn Yard's Bonny in Making Mischief
My project page on Ravelry is here.


These are quite an achievement for me. I bought the yarn on a bit of an impulse, in the sale, months and months ago. Since then, I have tried to make them into Wanidas, which they did not suit, and to make them vanilla socks, which I felt the yarn was better than.


The butterfly stitch pattern is easy to remember, and shows of the yarn really well. It also tends to break up any bits of pooling that appear now and again. I feel I have managed difficulties with a randomly variegated yarn. I am pretty chuffed!


This brings me to a small review of my sock progress for 2012. So far, I have knitted 10 pairs of socks, though two were cast on in 2011 and one of those I forgot to photograph before posting them. This means I have 9 pairs with evidence of their existence, and 8 pairs that are totally 2012 socks.

Therefore, I am not sure how to measure the number of socks I've managed to knit in 2012; by the number cast on, cast off or photographed? My plan is to knit socks as much as possible, and see where we are with numbers in another month or so. Any thoughts on that?

Friday 12 October 2012

Skew Socks, or How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Embrace my Foibles

Morning all! I promise I have not fallen off the face of the planet; it's just been a busy few weeks. Since last I wrote, I have helped getting the University knitting society back into full swing, had my PhD annual monitoring, bought a wedding dress, and checked out a few venues. Knitted quite a lot, though have not had the opportunity to tell you all about it!

So, we shall begin with the Skew socks, Pattern: Skew socks, a free download on ravelry [link]. Yarn: Regia 4ply Colour in Clown, from Hobbycraft in Aberdeen

These I knitted mostly while I was away at two conferences, in the first half of September. Broadly speaking, a really enjoyable knit. However, it did make my realise one of my no doubt many knitting foibles.

I wanted them to be exactly the same, so I made sure I started them the same, same number of stitches round, same needle size, doing the same stages of the pattern after the same number of stripes. 'This is a foolproof was to get identical socks', thought I. Not so, decided the Knitting Gods, or Gauge Karma, or somebody. They are in face different lengths, in both foot and leg.

Though I'm not sure I care now - it is only a very minor difference, after all - but I definitely did. In my rage at myself, I managed to mess up the grafting on the heel three times and needed the ever-patient Jo from Stitch & Bitch to set me right. However, they are now beautiful to me, and I have (hopefully) learned something about needing to look at the big picture while knitting.