The Cosmic Joke

I posted last month that I was having a really tough time with Second Sock Syndrome.  I had three beautiful socks done, and no interest in casting on any of their mates.  One weekend I decided to give myself a break and knit a Norwegian Sweet Baby Cap.  That way, I'd get my sock yarn fix but make something that didn't come in a pair.  Shortly after that, I found out I was pregnant with twins.  I am not kidding.

So, ironically, I ended up making a pair of hats too.  And all the baby knitting I was planning, I'm making two of everything now.  Here's my baby knitting checklist:

2 Norwegian Sweet Baby Caps - done
2 Pepitas  - may machine-knit most of these
2 Das Monster pants - can't decide whether to use sock yarn or heavier for older babies
2 baby blankies - one half-done

Deadline is the end of September, though with my last pregnancy I had such bad carpal tunnel syndrome in the third trimester that I couldn't crochet at all, so the sooner I get these done the better!

Sock Lab Experiments, Round 1 is complete

Finally finished the second Rainbow Sock this week:

Knitting the first sock went fine.  For the second sock, I decided to do toe-up just to keep things interesting... but since I had waited so long between socks #1 and #2, I forgot an important part of the pattern and inadvertently skipped two rows for every pattern repeat, or, by the time I'd gotten to the heel, sixteen rows.  Fail.  Frogged it and took my sweet time starting it over.  When I did, I got to the heel and stalled again.  This weekend I finally busted it out and finished sock #2.  The second sock is slightly shorter in the foot because my toe when I do a toe-up sock is fewer rows than when I do decreases top-down.  I haven't done the math yet to figure out why this is so, but it sure looked like the toe on the second sock is about 1/2" shorter.

I enjoyed this pattern for the first sock, especially because the yarn I dyed for the pattern looked exactly the way I wanted.   But doing two and a half socks with this pattern got to be a drag.  Glad I finished them, love how they look and fit, don't need to do them again.

Also I realized that I really should learn to do short rows in a way that is a little neater, especially when I am working in striped yarn.  If you look close-up, you can see that the ends of my short rows are marked with little prickles.  This is because instead of wrapping a stitch before I turn, I k2tog over the gap when I come back, and then do a lifted increase.  This lifted increase pulls the color from the row below into the current row, making the little spikey shapes.  I usually slip the first stitch of a short row after I turn, but I stopped doing that to see if it was contributing to the prickliness.  I need to do it better when I start my Lizard Ridge Afghan.

Next on deck in the sock laboratory, the famous Skew.

Monster Socks

After hoarding sock yarn scraps for months and months, I finally made my first pair of scrappy monster socks.  My husband claimed all the black/black stripes yarn in the scraps box, and away I went.  I wanted to use striped yarn for the heel, but I wanted a bullseye effect so I tried an afterthought heel for the first time.  I made up a sort of whirlpool heel that I'm not happy with - J showed me that the socks keep slipping over his heel, and one heel has one row too many in the center and has a funny little flap at the bottom.  After they come out of the wash I planned to take the heels apart and redo.

But after a few wearings, my husband told me the heel stretched out fine and the little flap of extra rows at the very base of the heel had resolved.  Apparently he loves wearing his odd socks with suits and deliberately showing them off during the work day!

Sock Monogamy

This week marks my two-year knitting birthday!  In March 2008 my friend Jessica sat me down and showed me the basics, and I've been off and running since then.

Having some issues with sock monogamy lately, also known as second sock syndrome:

Sock Wars Update

I am, remarkably, still alive after 5 weeks.  Of the original 203 warriors, the official count is 39 left standing as of this evening.  I have logged four kills, with the fifth launched Saturday and arriving at my victim's home any day.  I am amassing a great little collection of leftovers from each pair of death socks, which will become a pair of souvenir socks for myself when I do finally meet my warm woolly death.

Sock Wars homepage
An outsider's view of Sock Wars

Sock Lab - Let the Experiments Begin!

I believe that people tend to fall on a spectrum between color and texture.  I am definitely far, far on the color end.  What that means, in terms of socks, is that I buy a lot of crazy patterned sock yarn.  But I have learned (the hard way) that the crazier the yarn is, the simpler the pattern has to be.  So I make plain old stockinette socks that show off my yarn really nicely, but bore me to tears.

To combat ennui, I decided this weekend to suss out as many unusual sock constructions as I could find.  So far I have a good list of patterns to try, all with unique or atypical geometry:
Boxcars
Sidewinders
Rainbow Socks
Peppermintoes
Divergent
Target Practice
Hat Heels
Skew
Vice Versa

I cast on a pair of Rainbow Socks this weekend, and so far I am really happy with the look.  I dyed the yarn especially for this pattern, after trying it with different yarn and frogging when I didn't like the patterning.

Sock Wars V: Between Missions

Sock Wars is almost three weeks old, and I am still alive.  I have made four kills, the last being a target in Canada whose socks were put in the mail this morning.  After the initial intense rush to finish that first and second pair, there have been periods of waiting for the next socks-in-progress to arrive in the mail.  I now have this nagging feeling when I am between missions, like there's something I'm supposed to do that I've forgotten about.  And I find that I miss having a sock to work on.  To counteract this, I started a series of four socks which can pair up multiple ways.

This is fun yarn that I dyed myself.  I knit up two long blanks, each long enough for a full pair of socks.  I did a color wheel exercise: mixed red, yellow, and blue dye, and made dye mixes that were gradations in between each (so 25% red/75% blue, 50% red/50% blue, 75% red/25% blue, and so forth).  I ended up with twelve shades that made a lovely rainbow when blended from end to end. 


After the blanks were dyed, rinsed, and dried, I pulled them apart and skeined them into a loop that was ten armlengths around.  Since one armlength is about one round of sock knitting, this represents ten rounds.  Dyed half of the loop black, and presto!  Self-striping yarn.

The only problem is that I had some yarn left over when I made my first pair, so there was no red or purple in the mix.  I decided to solve the problem by making a second pair of socks that start with red and purple (but probably won't have much yellow and green in the mix).  They can be matched any which way because all four socks will be fraternal twins, but there won't be an identical pair in the bunch.  I've done two so far and I'm casting on a third tonight.