Blue self-patterning socks

Recipient: DH
Designer: Debbi Young
Pattern: Sock It to Me Plain Toe-Up Socks for the Family
Source: elann.com
Completed: February 7, 2006
Colours: 'Navy/blue' colourway
Yarn: Fortissima Colori Socka Color, 75% superwash wool/25% polyamid, sock weight
Ungiven status: To give as anniversary gift on February 17, 2006
Notes: Originally intended as birthday gift but became anniversary gift when original anniversary gift fell through
Pictures:

completed


'in action'

2006-Feb-8

Done! My first pair of socks of the year. I will of course be sending word of this over to 200Sox!

Now, all I have to do is hide them from my husband for four more months. Wish me luck.

2006-Feb-6

Almost finished!


Sock #1 is here pictured behind sock #2 so that you can see how bee-yew-tifully the two socks are matching up.

2006-Feb-2

Foot of sock #2 is done - I've placed the insteps on a spare piece of yarn and am ready to begin the heel shaping. Woo. Again, pictures forthcoming.

2006-Jan-30

In the absence of the right equipement to continue DH's anniversary present, I'm focusing on the next deadline-driven item, which is DH's birthday present. The toe is now complete and I'm moving up the foot. So far we are still matching sock #1 bee-yew-tifully.

2006-Jan-29

Well, I finally took that deep fortifying breath I needed and undid the castoff of sock #1. I redid it using a larger needle, which resulted (duh) in a top edge that does not cut off the circulation in my calf. They should fit DH just fine. I almost didn't complete the castoff with the amount of yarn I had, though - in fact, I had to K2tog with the last stitch (hopefully that makes sense to you) in order to have enough yarn to weave in at the back of the sock to stop the castoff from unravelling. But no matter, it's done. Hooray.

I then started work on sock #2. To my delight, the second skein not only variegated in the same order as the first skein when I started pulling from the centre, but it also started at almost the exact same point in the colourway. I was very impressed - which contrasted rather markedly with the disgust I felt with my other self-patterning yarn of the same brand. Go figure. I did have to play a little fast-and-loose about an inch into the toe to get the stripes to start going in precisely the same spots as with sock #1 (yes, I'm just that anal), but you can hardly tell:


So far I'm very pleased.

2006-Jan-22

Sock #1 is complete!



Unfortunately I tried it on and it turns out I made the cast-off too tight. Not so bad that I can't get the sock on easily (as I have done before) but bad enough that it will probably start cutting uncomfortably into my calf after a few minutes, never mind DH's calf (which I'm pretty sure has a bigger circumference than mine). So at some point I shall have to suck it up and re-do the cast off. Bugger.

2006-Jan-19

I'm zooming up the leg of sock #1 pretty quickly.


Ribbing has just started. When to start the ribbing turned out to be a pretty easy decision thanks to the very regular self-patterning nature of the yarn. It turns out that the amount of yarn in one full repeat of the colourway gives me somewhat more than three inches of stocking stitch on this sock. I've guessed that this will probably work out to about three inches in 2x2 ribbing (and three inches just happens to be how long the ribbing should be). Last night I wound what remained of the skein into a ball (which killed two birds with one stone, since this particular skein has not stopped tangling since I started using it) and as I went, I counted how many colourway repeats were left in the skein.

The goal is to use up as much of the yarn as possible without falling short, and even to leave myself some 'wiggle room', partly to account for any tension variances in sock #2, partly in case skein #2 has slightly less yardage than skein #1, and partly in case I need to start sock #2 further up the skein than sock #1 for purposes of sock identicalization. If that makes sense. It certainly does to me...

Anyway, the upshot of all of this blather is that I'm fewer than three inches away from finishing sock #1.

2006-Jan-17

This is going very well indeed. I finished turning the heel of sock #1 tonight:


Boy, that self-patterning thing never stops being cool.

2006-Jan-14

I finally took a picture:

2006-Jan-11

A tad more got done on this last night after DD's latest request for privacy in the bathroom. (One of these days I will actually post a photo of the thing...er, the sock, that is, not my kid on a toilet.) After my 'privacy ban' was over, I put the knitting down in the hall and went back into the bathroom. Then, in the wee hours of this morning, DD woke up screaming blue murder with a bad nosebleed (for the third night in a row...very frustrating, the child simply will not stop picking her nose). When we finally calmed her down and cleaned everything up, she looked at the knitting sitting in the hall and kind of told me off for putting it on the floor, and insisted that it get put somewhere better. :)

2006-Jan-9

Yeah, I started these. I have no control over Startitis, even in times of deadline-driven knitting panic. But mostly, this project sits in the upstairs hall and is only what I pick up for a few minutes whenever I'm waiting there. For example, when DD is on the toilet and has requested some privacy. (No, seriously, she actually says, "Mummy, I would like some pwyvassee." It is beyond cute.)

I also worked on this a little bit this weekend, while watching The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. (What am I doing going to the movies when there is deadline knitting to be done, you may ask? Well, I adore the Narnia books, and I absolutely had to see this movie in the theatre. Sunday was the only time in the next three weeks that I could swing going to the movies, and I didn't know whether the film would still be playing after that. So there.) Ordinarily I am perfectly capable of knitting something as simple as stocking stitch in the dark. However, this time I somehow lost all competence and managed to pick up an extra stitch, thereby necessitating about a centimetre of frogging. So I'm only just beyond the toe.

Naturally, I have some good non-lies at the ready if DH ever asks me about this project. "I couldn't wait to see how this yarn would pattern" is at the top of the list. (It is 100% true.)

2005-Dec-27

I think I've decided that I'm going to use my new navy/blue Fortissima Colori Socka Yarn for socks for DH. Shhhh. Don't tell him.