Grey socks for bro

Recipient: My brother
Designer: Debbi Young
Pattern: Sock It to Me Plain Toe-Up Socks for the Family
Source: elann.com
Completed: April 18, 2006
Colours: Grey
Yarn: Bernat Sox, 60% acrylic/40% nylon, sock weight
Completed status: Now they fit
Pictures:

2006-Apr-19

Yesterday morning I started in on the sizing fix for sock #2. It started out really well - I put the needles into the stitches on the row I wanted to cut back to, and, to make the cut, was even able to find a substitute for the scissors that I left at my parents' place - curses - on Monday night. (I used my Swiss Army Knife, which was the gift I chose for my five-year anniversary with my employer - scads better than the bookends which were also offered.) Unfortunately, this is when it all turned sour. I'd started unravelling the cut row when I realised I'd made the cut below the needles instead of above. More cursing. I had to take out the needles and re-insert them two rows down. Then, once the cut row was all unravelled and the toe was ready to re-knit, I had to knit an extra two rows before starting the toe decreases. Not a huge time-waster, and completely fixable, but still a pain in the ass (and a blow to my ego).

Anyway, the great news is that I finished the fix on my lunch break.

This project is now complete (insert chord sung by heavenly choir) and I will be notifying 200Sox. Hoo-freakin'-ray. This week my husband and my mother will somehow be meeting up and exchanging items - I will be getting my scissors back, and my mom will be taking home, among other things, my brother's socks.

I just have one question. See this?


This is a closeup shot of the toe decreases. The 'ridge' to the right, comprised of K2togs, is beautifully clean and straight. The ridge to the left, comprised of K2togtbls, is ridiculously wonky.

WHY DOES MY KNITTING DO THIS?!?

Seriously - it doesn't matter if I do my left-slanting decreases with K2togtbls, SSKs or Sl1/K1/PSSOs, they always create a horribly wonky line in stark contrast to the sleek beauty of my K2tog decreases.

Does anyone know what I'm doing wrong? Or maybe I'm doing nothing wrong and this is just part of the physics of knitting?

Anyone?

Bueller?

2006-Apr-17

These are no longer for DH. They're now for my brother. For his birthday (today). This decision came about thanks to several factors. The first was that, as I've mentioned before, I really wanted to give socks to my brother, and his birthday was the perfect occasion for that kind of thing, and these grey socks were the closest to being finished. Another plus: he and my husband wear the same size shoe, according to my mom, so I could count on their feet being more or less the same length. Yet another plus: as my first all-continental project, my gauge was looser than normal, and the socks wouldn't have been particularly snug on my husband. My brother, however, has very wide feet (again according to my mom), so the looseness of the grey socks would likely make them ideal for him.

The final factor in the decision to make these socks for my brother instead of my husband was that DD totally spilled the beans to DH about the existence of the socks. I was working on them in front of her (my first mistake), and DH came back upstairs from the basement, so I hid them. What does DD say the moment DH shows up? "Daddy! Mummy is making you a sock!"

Oh, but it gets better. DH then went into the kitchen, and I whisperingly urged DD to STOP TALKING TO DADDY ABOUT THE SOCKS, for heaven's sake, because they were a secret. Then I went upstairs to hide the socks. As I was doing so, what do I hear downstairs? "Daddy! Mummy went to hide your sock!"

I admit, I have finally learned my lesson. DD has so NOT grasped the concept of keeping a secret yet.

So, with the cat completely and utterly out of the bag, there was no point dithering anymore. The Universe was trying to tell me something: the socks were obviously meant to be for my brother. I was a little nervous about whether I'd be able to finish the second sock in time for this evening, but I figured I had a pretty good shot. Silly me. I had more than a pretty good shot. I finished the second sock in plenty of time early Sunday afternoon. This is the second sock:


Unfortunately, as of this morning, this was the first sock:


Yes, I unravelled the entire first sock down to the completion of the toe. Why?

Well...

When doing the second sock, I remembered that my gauge on the first sock had been kind of loose, so I consciously knit a little more loosely than I had to in order to duplicate the loose gauge of the first sock. Sadly, I did this way too well and the second sock was way bigger than the first sock. DH tried both of them on. The first sock fit him fairly snugly, and the second sock was very slouchy. As I've mentioned, my brother's feet are wide (and I suspect his calves are bigger than DH's), so I guessed that the second sock would fit him very well but that he'd probably have a hard time even getting the first sock on.

I had no choice. Regardless of whom the socks were supposed to be for, I had to re-knit one of them. We were having our Easter visit at my MIL's at the time, and DH's family looked on in horror as I frogged the first sock back and began it again almost from the beginning.

Fortunately, the glorious speed of continental knitting kicked in and I'd finished turning the heel by the time we left my MIL's house on Sunday night. I worked on it all the way home and today on my lunch and during my whole commute to and from work. By the time I got off the subway near my parents' place I had just seven ribbing rows to go on the second sock, so I sat myself down on a bench in the subway, finished the ribbing, cast off, wove in all the ends, and attached my customary 'knitted just for you' label. I was later to the party than I wanted to be but I MADE IT, dammit.

My brother? He liked the socks.

Then he tried them on.

They fit really well around his calves, the width of his feet, and they felt comfy. The only tiny snag was that the feet were at least an inch and a half too LONG.

That is when I realised these were the Socks From Hell, sent to test me. So I sighed, took a deep breath, and spent the rest of the evening fixing one of the socks.

These were knitted toe-up, but there was no freakin' way I was going to rip all the way back down the leg, down the heel, back to where the heel should have started. Screw that. Instead, I pinpointed where the toe should have started further up on the foot, put needles through that row of stitches, cut above the row on the needles, separated the tip of the foot from the rest of the sock, and redid the toe. Result:


I'll do the same thing for the second sock tomorrow.

2006-Apr-12

At last, I started the second sock last night while DH was grocery shopping. It's not much, but it's a start:

(the first sock is a little rumpled because it's been carried around smushed up in my bag for a while)

2006-Feb-27

This weekend saw huge progress, largely because I was desperate to get the first sock in this pair done so I could use the needles to start knitting with my new self-striping Kroy yarn.

(You are seeing an almost-completed sock. Be assured that the sock is now completed, I just haven't taken a picture of it yet.)

Never would I have believed that I could knit the entire leg of a man's sock with 2mm needles after just one afternoon, one evening, and one television program's worth of work. This continental knitting thing rocks. Unfortunately (or fortunately, considering that I still have the second sock to knit and I'd like it to be the same size as the first one) my gauge with continental has still not tightened up to equal my gauge when I knit English.

2006-Feb-23

I've finished turning the heel. I discovered during this process that I had somehow managed to add an extra stitch on the heel side somewhere. I haven't found out where yet, but after a few minutes of fruitless hunting for the error point I said 'screw it' and just did a decrease on the next row. The likelihood of anyone (but me) noticing is slim.

I was nervous about doing the heel since it means doing purl rows, which I'm still getting used to doing in the continental way. However, after a few rather painful rows I seem to have gotten the hang of it.



This sock is giving me one helluva feeling of accomplishment, I tell ya. It's a great learning piece.

2006-Feb-22

Well, I did it. I ripped it all back to the part of the toe where I would stop increasing for the women's size. Then I started back up again, just knitting without shaping for the foot. I'm now following the pattern instructions for the women's size, width-wise, and the instructions for the men's size, length-wise. The theory is that this will give me a sock which is long enough for my husband's foot but which won't be ridiculously wide around his feet and legs, given the looser gauge I'm getting by knitting continentally. It's a bit too early to tell for sure but I think it's working. Still loving how I'm zooming along using this technique.

2006-Feb-10

There is a problem.

In my last entry, I mentioned that I was knitting more loosely with the continental style than I do when I 'throw'. There were definite advantages to this - lack of laddering and a clean line at the toe. Unfortunately, it turns out that there are definite disadvantages, too. Witness:

Don't see it? How about when I include my hand for scale:

Girthwise, this thing is huge. My husband is going to freakin' swim in these socks. Now, if these were supposed to be casual, slouch-around-the-house socks, I wouldn't care if they were roomy. But these are plain and grey. They're supposed to be dressy, can-wear-them-outside-the-house-in-pretty-nice-clothes socks. Slouchy does not cut it here.

I'm seriously considering ripping out the whole foot and some of the toe, and redoing it all using the instructions for the woman's size.

Stupid loose continental gauge. Stoo-pid. #*@*&$.

2006-Feb-8

These got started on the bus ride home today. I had decided that this would be my first all-continentally-knitted project...except for the cast-on. (I still felt I needed to do that with my right hand in charge.)

It has been going scads better than I thought it would. For some reason, I'm much more comfortable (and fast!) with continental using smaller needles and thinner yarn than when I was with all my practice pieces (which, as you have probably surmised, used big needles and thicker yarn). Moreover, the toe looks sooo much better than the toes I made knitting English-style, and I can't see any laddering:


I think this is because my gauge is looser with continental. Regardless, I'm ridiculously happy about how it's going. It is super-fast, I can barely believe how fast I do the stitches once I get going! My only complaint is that the yarn seems to be a tad splitty. :(

2006-Jan-13

Also while at the evil mass retailer which shall remain nameless, I picked up the following:



This purchase comes under the heading of "can't get it anywhere else without ridiculous inconvenience" and thus alleviates my guilt at having handed over my hard-earned money to a non-Canadian merchant with questionable business practices. Our local Zellers consistently has an unbelievably crappy yarn selection, even by comparison with other Zellerses, and while I did once see this yarn available for sale there, all subsequent visits (and there have been many) have convinced me that they no longer carry this particular product in this particular colour...which I very much want to use for DH's Father's Day socks. Shhh.