Monday, January 22, 2007

Progress and detour

Clipping along on the Socken it to the Family Socks. Managed to hit the guage I wanted spot-on for Parent #1's socks (wasn't a totally blind guess, that lovely orange sock for myself was similar enough in weight that I could extrapolate). I'm making this one up as I go along, taking the chevron pattern from one of the fantastic knitting resources I obtained this Christmas. About half-way through the leg of sock #1.
parent#1 leg

The sock for Cousin #1 hasn't faired so well. The yarn is wonderful - such luxury and departure from the stiff, slippery cotton - but the pattern just isn't going to work. I'd planned to use this one, and it had fair promise, but double-stranded fingering weight alpaca/silk does not like to cable. Oh, I'm sure it works well in other people's hands, but in tight-guaged sock knitting I was spending too much time cursing. The yarn is also probably going to get very fuzzy with wear, so all of that hard work would be quickly lost.
cousin#1 take1

How far did I get before I realized this sock was doomed?
cousin#1 take 1 close up
Yep. A whole three rows into the pattern. Turns out the designer tricked me. I thought, oh, 80 stitches per row isn't so bad, especially when it will be so pretty. Except that after the ribbing rows there was a row of increases. 108 stitches. 108 stitches with cables in every single row Sneaky.

So I've abandonded that pattern and picked one from the archives of this group. It's a nice pattern, one I would never have knit until I saw the many variations different knitters had created. Plus I only need to cast on 60-some stitches. Muuuch better. I'm not much for knit-a-longs (Sock Wars did me in), but I decided to give it a try for 2007. I expect that 6 members of the family will be getting socks knit from patterns during this knit-a-long.

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