Self-patterning socks #2 for DH

Recipient: DH
Designer: Debbi Young
Pattern: Sock It to Me Plain Toe-Up Socks for the Family
Source: elann.com
Completed: May 29, 2006
Colours: Self-patterning yarn, "Denim" colourway #64601, lot 65883 - greys, white, black and powder blue
Yarn: Patons Kroy Socks Jacquards yarn, 75% wool/25% nylon, sockweight
Ungiven status: Due June 4, 2006 (birthday party date)
Pictures:

2006-May-29

Done!

I faced a little bit of a challenge on this. Because I wanted the striping on the two socks to match each other, I had to start the second ball quite a ways in from the beginning. That meant I finished the second skein before the second sock was complete (compared to the first sock). However, I was able to trickily use the extra from the beginning of the skein to mimic the rest of the patterning and thus, as you see, I have two identical socks. It meant undoing the cast-off of the first sock and redoing it so that the colours would all match, but that wasn't a big deal. Annoying, but not a big deal.

The most incredible part is that there is no yarn left over. NONE. Just the bits I snipped off after weaving in the ends. Unbelievable.

DH will receive them this Sunday!

2006-May-26

As DD's birthday approached I had a little wake-up call and panic attack. Since DH's birthday is eleven days after DD's, not even having the first sock for his birthday present completed was not good. Since then, I've been concentrating mostly on this (except when DH is around, of course) and have made very good progress:


I love making self-patterning socks match. Love. It. I'm sure this reveals all kind of interesting things about my character and psychological makeup, but who cares as long as the socks look good.

2006-May-20

I can hardly believe it, but I'm now on the top ribbing of the first sock:


I would love to say that nothing else has gone wrong so far, but since it looks like I'm going to run out of the first skein before I finish the full three inches of the top ribbing, I can't be truthful about that.

2006-May-12

Hell Heel has been turned! The journey up the leg is going well.

2006-May-11

I'm starting to think that the first sock of this pair is The Sock That Does Not Want To Be. As if ripping out my first attempt at the sock was not bad enough, I then messed up the math (note to self: 7.5 plus 2.5 does NOT equal 10.5...sigh...) and turned the heel a half-inch too soon.

Rip.

Finally this afternoon I got to what was definitely, absolutely the right point to start turning the heel, so, naturally, I started turning it. As I was nearing the halfway point I noticed that the numbers were kind of weird. The pattern sez that as you're going through the first set of short rows, you're supposed to purl an even number of stitches before turning on the wrong sides, and knit an odd number of stitches before turning on the right sides. Well, I started counting, and it turned out that I was doing the opposite. I counted, and found that I had somehow managed to place 37 stitches on a spare length of yarn for the instep and begin work on 35 stitches for the heel, instead of an even division of 36 and 36.

Riiiiip.

I'm now pretty close to finishing the heel, and (knock on wood) things seem to be okay now.



I'm hoping that once the heel is done, the trip up the leg proceeds without incident so that I can get this #$*@#&$!!!-ing sock done and start on its mate. DH's birthday is less than a month away.

2006-May-3

2006-Apr-30

This week I finished the toe and started work on the foot:


And I got a little bit of work done on it this morning, too.

Tomorrow is May, and DH's birthday is at the beginning of June, so I'm starting to feel the need to hustle on this a bit. I may focus more on it this week than in previous weeks.

2006-Apr-26

Toe is complete, foot is moving along.

2006-Apr-25

I finished sock #1. I tried it on. As I expected, it fit me very nicely towards the top of the sock (the most recently-knitted bit). This was good because it meant that my continental gauge had approached the same tension as my English gauge. But this was also bad because it meant that the top of the sock (and likely all of sock #2) was going to be too small for DH to wear.

So I ripped it all out.

I even ripped out the toe, because that was the most loosely-knit section of all, and I figured the gauge difference between old and new would be extremely obvious.

(Sorry, I forgot to take a shot of the completed sock before I frogged.)

Sock #1, take two, is now approaching completion of the toe. I comfort myself in the fact that I have 42 days before I need to have the socks done for DH's birthday. Also comforting is the knowledge that I could probably switch back and forth between continental and English during any same project and not worry significantly about gauge differences. I consider this far more valuable than not having to knit a sock twice.

2006-Apr-21

When I started this, I was still kind of just getting started on the continental knitting thing, and had discovered that my continental gauge was looser than my English gauge. So, in order to get non-sloppy socks for DH, I cast on for the women's size. (I had good reason to do this - it had worked really well for my first continentally-knit sock project.)

However, I've been getting progressively more savvy about my continental knitting, and I hate to admit it partway into the first sock, but I think my gauge is tightening up. I'm almost finished the top ribbing, so soon I'll be able to try on the sock and see if I'm right. If it fits me nice and snugly closer to the top, I'll know my gauge has indeed tightened and I'll need to do the whole sock over again, this time with a more consistent gauge, in the men's size. The advantage of this is that it will mean my continental gauge is roughly equivalent to my English gauge, which would be terrific. If the sock is sloppy on me, it will mean I don't have to re-knit the sock all over again, but on the other hand, it'll also mean that I still have to do lots more practice until my continental gauge equals my English gauge. So really, it's a win-win situation. Or lose-lose, depending on how you see things.

2006-Apr-17

With the grey socks re-assigned to my brother, I now need a sock project to do for DH's birthday present. Therefore, these socks, which were originally for DH...then were maybe for my brother...then were maybe for my dad...are now absolutely, certainly and finally, for DH again. This should not be too much of a problem to pull off, since I'm already on the leg of sock #1 and I have a month and a half to finish them.

2006-Apr-12

No more knitting on these socks has been accomplished, but I'm a little more decided now on whom they're for. The pendulum has swung back the other way and I'm back to making these for DH. They will either be the second pair in his birthday gift, or, if I finish them really soon, a gift to celebrate the fact that DH just successfully achieved his 'Certified "Class A" Clubmaker' designation with the Professional Clubmakers' Society (PCS), which we're all super-thrilled about. (Shameless plug: looking for custom-fit, game-improving golf clubs which won't cost an arm and a leg? Give him a yell.)

2006-Mar-21

Tumblina, you doll! I was thinking about using Google to see if there was a webpage out there to give me foot lengths for shoe sizes, but you just up and handed it to me! Ain't you nice. :) Thanks. You're right, it doesn't show foot widths and apparently my brother takes a wide shoe, but I can probably wing it.

So I sent my mom a picture of the socks in progress and asked her whether she thought my brother would like them. She said yes. My dad said no. AUGH! Now I'm even more conflicted. We were over at my parents' for dinner last night and I asked my dad why he thought bro wouldn't like them, and he confirmed my opinion - that bro will probably find them 'unmanly' (or, to use my brother's favourite expression for this kind of thing, which I absolutely abhor and tell him to stop using every time he utters it around me, 'gay'). But then again, said my dad, you never do know with your brother. If his friends think the socks are cool, he will probably decide they're cool, too. On the other hand, I asked my mom about the current contents of bro's sock drawer, and apparently it's all solid blacks and greys.

So conflicted.

Dammit. Maybe I'll just buy some more sock yarn in an excruciatingly boring colour and knit them up for bro.

Or wait...WAIT! Maybe...I'll switch sock projects...these ones could be for bro instead, and DH could have the new self-patterning ones! Apparently they both wear the same size shoe.

Except that last night, my parents started talking about this little project idea of mine right in front of DH who has no idea that the new self-patterning sock yarn is in my possession because it still might be a surprise present for him. I coulda killed 'em. The other problem with giving bro the grey socks is that I really do want to give DH some plain, solid-colour socks.

Sigh.

Maybe the self-patterning socks could be for my dad...his birthday is in September...

2006-Mar-18

I haven't worked any more on these, but I did have a thought. What if, instead of making them for some unknown occasion for DH, I made them for my brother? His birthday is coming up mid-April. This would seem like the perfect idea. However, I'm still waffling on whether or not to do it because of two issues. One: My brother likely has bigger feet than my husband, so I would have to rip back the two inches of leg and the heel on the sock and make the foot bigger before turning the heel again. While annoying, this is a minor issue. The bigger problem is that I don't know whether my brother would actually like the socks. I think he would absolutely appreciate the gift itself, but although the colourway of the yarn has 'manly' colours like grey and black, the pattern might be a little too 'fussy' for his tastes. So I'm torn.

I think I'll ask my mom. I'd have to call her anyway to give me my brother's shoe size. (Anyone know how to translate shoe size into foot length?)

2006-Mar-3

Coming along very nicely. Heel of sock #1 has been turned and I'm about two inches up the leg. My speed rocks! I'm so happy.

However, I seem to have several choices as to when to give these socks to DH. The first choice - and sort of the original gameplan - is as a Father's Day present. But I have a better idea for that (see this project), so that's already taken care of. The second choice is to wait for the next gift-giving occasion. Since his birthday is already taken care of with the dress socks, and I'm already planning to make him a sweater for Christmas, that means the next occasion is our anniversary...which is a year away. No WAY am I waiting that long to give him these great socks. My third choice is not to wait for an occasion at all but just to give them to him. That could actually be fun - I would just put them in his sock drawer and wait for him to notice. :) (Which he totally would, and then he'd go all vorklept.)

There's a fourth choice that's looking more and more appealing: I could give him two pairs of socks for his birthday - these ones and the dress socks. This might actually work pretty well since the two pairs colour-coordinate with each other rather nicely.

But right now I just don't know. On the other hand - who cares?!? These are really great socks!

2006-Feb-27

While I was in the Lewiscraft on Saturday hunting for a nonexistent 3.5mm circular needle, I also looked at yarn. I know, I know. How dumb was that - there really is no such thing as merely 'looking' at yarn. Once you are 'looking' you are pretty much guaranteed to soon be 'purchasing'. But this was not as dumb a move as you may think. Why? Since Lewiscraft looks like it'll go out of business, they were having a sale on everything. EVERYTHING. In some cases (off-season items), stuff was 70% off. Yarn was 30% off. And little ol' me actually managed to nab the last two balls in the shop of Patons Kroy Socks Jacquards yarn, 75% wool/25% nylon:

Need I point out the delicious fact that these last two balls were even in the same colourway? I can't remember exactly how much it cost, but even after the tax I paid less than $9. Whee!

(Oh, BTW...they also had quite a few balls of discontinued White Buffalo wool at 30% off. If anyone's interested, this specific Lewiscraft was the one in Etobicoke.)

Anyway, one of the balls now looks like this:


They will be socks for DH, knit continentally. I'm not exactly sure what occasion I'm going to use to give these socks to him, though. Since I scrapped his anniversary mittens, bumped his birthday socks up to anniversary socks and bumped his Father's Day socks up to birthday socks, logic would dictate that these should be Father's Day socks. However, I've had a pretty cool idea idea for another Father's Day gift for him (if we can ignore the stupidity of giving a man a pure wool scarf in the dead of summer and having the temerity to call it a 'cool' idea) so these new socks may have to be saved for another time.