Our Paths Cross socks are done!

I finished my Lorilee Beltman Our Paths Cross socks!  These are so cool.  I just love the vertical stranding technique.  It isn’t stranded colorwork, it isn’t intarsia, and it isn’t duplicate stitch. It’s way better, in my opinion.

As you can see, I reversed the colors so that these are mirror images of one another: It is exceptionally difficult to take a photo of the back of one’s own legs.  I got a lot of this – ha!  I finally asked for help. I really like the back of these socks, the way the pyramid heel handles the decreases and then the ribbing grows out of a triangle.  So attractive.I used Simply Sock Yarn Solids for this in Wheatgrass, Brick, and Turquoise.  This yarn is great for colorwork. It has a nice tight twist, three plies, and some nylon for strength.  It comes in 64 colors, and the put up is only 50 grams so you can buy smaller amounts for colorwork.

I’m very pleased with how these came out.  I’ll be keeping an eye out for new pattern releases from Lorilee that use this technique.

Thistle and Forest Plaid Socks are DONE!

I finished these nearly a week ago but it took me a while to get the camera and the socks together.  Here they are!

I’m quite happy with how these turned out.  Despite my best efforts, the two socks aren’t identical.  When turning the heel of #1, I figured out a better way to begin picking up the strands on sock #2.  I took notes and followed them when I got to #2 – but it turns out that the change I made on the sole of #2 (which was to begin the round in the middle of the bottom rather than at one of the needle changes) affected the leg of #2 in such a way that the vertical stripes didn’t match up any more.  The soles are more or less identical, but can you see how the vertical stripes on the leg aren’t quite the same?On the left sock, the vertical blue and green stripes are evenly spaced.  On the right sock, there are 10 stitches between the green and blue stripes instead of 8.  Let’s look at the other side: Left sock: the space between the green and blue stripes is less (only 6 stitches).  I know that no one will ever notice this when the socks are being worn, but it bugs me a tiny bit and I might reknit the entire pattern one day just to prove I can do it right.

Julie commented that these look really long in the leg.  I think it’s a visual trick that has to do with the heel.  We’re so used to seeing the heel flap come up the back of the heel, but here it’s placed on the bottom.  In this picture, the socks are on my feet.  I actually think they fit me a bit better than S1.  If I knit this style heel flap for her again, I will add 3 extra rounds in the sole.

These vertical climbing strands are really fun.  I think one of my next socks is going to be another Lorilee Beltman pattern that uses this technique: the Our Paths Cross socks.  Take a look.  These are toe-up again, but the heel is totally different and unlike anything I’ve knit before.  I wonder if I have anything in stash that will work?  I need 100 g of the main color and it probably needs to be a light color.  Hmmm.

Suggestions welcome.

Plaid driving me mad?

Okay, I’ve alluded to a new project and here it is.  I’ve decided to knit Lorilee Beltman’s Thistle and Forest Plaid Socks.  I took a class from her at Sock Summit (the 2011 one) and learned this nifty method of doing colorwork with vertical strands.  This design has some regular stranded colorwork, too – but it was the vertical climbing strands that really caught my attention.

Based on my experience with the abandoned Bohus-Style Knee Highs (remember? I mixed two types of solid yarns and got mixed results), I acquired a bit more yarn so that all FIVE colors could be from the same yarn line.  I used the Simply Sock Yarn Solids from Simply Socks Yarn Company.  The toes, heels, and cuffs will be in Chocolate, and the main color will be Mocha:

The stripes will be in Green, Brick, and Deep Sea:

Okay, yarn obtained and wound.  Then I read the pattern really, really closely.  I discovered that while two sizes are listed, they are “cheater sizes” – and by that, I mean that you get a different size by changing your gauge, mostly, rather than your stitch count.  To get the women’s size, you need to get 8 stitches/inch.  I believe my “loose knitter” status is already well-documented, so it won’t surprise you that I NEVER get 8 st/in, even with my trusty 2.0 mm needles.  Hmmm.  Lorilee says that the circumference is hard to adjust and she discourages it.  But the CO number is 72.  72!  This is a number I abandoned years ago, so I am wary.  But after some consideration, I decided to go ahead and knit 72.  I don’t think the vertical stripes will affect stretchiness, but the horizontal ones will pull in the fabric a little.  And worst case scenario, I can give the socks to someone else if they turn out man-sized.  (I might know a really nice male knitter who is sock-worthy.)

This is a toe-up pattern with eye-of-partridge stitch on the toe tip, for extra strength.  Neat!  I cast on and increase to 72, then knit 15 rounds straight.  Here is what that toe looks like: See how the eye-of-partridge bit looks kind of checkerboard-y compared to the regular stockinette above it?

I begin the vertical climbing strands.  After an ingenious but somewhat tedious setup (which involves 6 strands of yarn 8 feet long each, with their tails wisely pulled through to the front so you don’t accidentally knit them), my vertical climbers start climbing:

But then I face the truth: this sock is going to be WAY TOO BIG.  How much too big?  Just look it it compared to another recently knit sock that fits my foot well:

I decide this is silly and that of course I can adjust the CO number.  I think about going down to 60 (cra-cra?!) but settle on good ole’ 64.  I rip the whole thing back and start again, congratulating myself that I have faced the music so bravely and done the right thing.  My vertical climbing strands don’t have the exact same distance between each one of them, but I don’t mind – plaids aren’t always like that – and I knit on.  I’m pleased as punch with myself – until I get to the first horizontal stripe.

Oh.  Now I get it.

Do you see what isn’t right here?  When the horizontal green strand intersects with the vertical climbers, it should still go Green-Mocha-Green-Mocha-Green-Mocha all the way across.  It does this just fine when it intersects with the green climber, but it gets off when it hits the red climber (and also blue).  Take a closer look:

That just isn’t right.  I know how to fix it now.  I can either take the sock back to 60 stitches and have perfectly spaced out vertical climbing strands, or I can stick with 64 stitches and have the verticals not QUITE evenly spaced.  I’ll have S1 try on what I have now before making that final determination and ripping back.

But there will be some ripping.  A rip-roarin’ good time!

And that’s what I’ve been up to.  It’s making me a little crazy, but in a good way.

Knee socks?!

I finished my green leafy wrap yesterday, but I can’t show it to you because it’s in a sink full of suds right now.  Instead, I’ll share a project I started a couple of weeks ago: knee socks.

I know! Who starts warm, wooly knee socks in April?  But I felt inspired, so I just went with it.  I have wanted to make Chrissy Gardiner’s Bohus-Style Knee-Highs for a while now.  I had the pattern, but not the yarn.  I decided to see if I could make it work from stash. 

On the left is the photo from the book (muted color palette) and on the right is another version (much bolder) from the Knit Picks catalog.  I bought some wood dpns to use, since my stranded sock knitting in the round hasn’t been going so well with my usual two circular method.

Let’s have another look at the bolder socks, shall we?  They are just so stunning! I contemplated the stash, consulted with S1, and came up with this: The pretty spring green is Shelridge Farm Soft Touch Heather in color “willow,” originally purchased to make the Treetop Socks for myself.  I really wanted to make those socks, but there were big huge red flags that caused me to abandon the plan.  I have 200 g, plenty for knee socks.  That will be the main color.  The contrasting colors are all from Simply Socks Yarn Company’s new(ish) solid line.  The blue is left over from Boy 2’s Fjordland socks (also designed by Chrissy Gardiner), and the two browns are 2 of the 4 colors purchased to make Mad for Plaid socks for S1.  She okayed their reassignment (I can always get more).

I have begun.  I can’t say I love knitting on dpns – it feels very slow and unnatural to me.  I will very likely switch back to circs once I get past the bohus band at the top of the cuff.  But for now, I’m using the pointy little sticks:

The Bohus-style band is only 37 rounds wide.  Not much.  Then again, I’ve only done about 7 of those rounds.  Slow going!

NOW what?!

Pam’s socks are driving me out of my mind.  I finally got through the most fiddly (but beautiful, nonetheless) heel flap in the history of sock knitting, took a deep breath, and picked up the gusset stitches.  You know how you pick up that end column of slipped stitches?  Well, my slipped stitches looked pretty normal before I picked them up, but they pulled out much bigger after I picked them up.  I guess this is caused by incorrect (loose) tension on the wrong side of the heel flap.  Do you see what I mean? It may be a little hard to see because my skin is so pasty white.  So now I suppose I rip back the entire flap and try again.  Is that my only option here?  Any better ideas?

I have been steadfastly ignoring this problem all week.  I didn’t knit at all Monday and Tuesday evenings (yes, that bad).  Wednesday I went to book group and knit on my work sock.  Thursday I cast on for S1’s new felted clogs.  I finished the first one today.  As always, it is incredibly amusing to have knit a foot covering for a giant.  My kids get a big kick out of it, too (haw haw).

What all the flap’s about

I finished the heel flap last night.  It is really cool how those racing stripes extend and expand.  I love the way it looks.  But it hurt my head a bit.

This flap is a big longer than a standard heel flap, in order to account for the relative lack-of-stretchiness that stranded knitting produces. 

Want to see the ugly inside?

50% faster!

I continued laboring over my wacky heel flap last night and found my pace increased to about 6 rows/hour – 50% faster than the night before!  Crazy.  I got 12 rows done. I think I sped up because I started documenting where I am on which row: This is far and away the most fiddly and complicated heel flap I have ever constructed.  Pam’s prize socks are just determined to be a huge learning experience for me, one way or another!

…and now we return to our regularly scheduled programming

I finished the sweater!  It’s still drying after being blocked, so I don’t have any photos to share – yet.

I picked up the Culture Socks again, which I hadn’t touched since casting on back on January 2.  They are cruising along.  It is hard to get used to how they look.  They are not stretchy at all, so they look HUGE.  I keep putting them on my feet to make sure they are not huge, and they aren’t… but they look huge.

I finished the first leg yesterday and have rearranged the stitches to begin the heel flap.  The green-pink-green-pink-green stripes that you see in the middle run right down the back of the sock, and then continue (and expand) into the heel flap.  This is HARD!

Let me remind you where we’re headed.  See how those racing stripes expand as the heel flap grows, and the section of pattern stitch on either side gets smaller?  (This is Elinor’s photo from the pattern page.)

Achieving this is a bit of a mindbender.  The racing stripes used to be at the very beginning and end of each round.  So now that I’m knitting back and forth, I’m not on the same line of the stitch pattern.  For the pattern to the right of the stripes, I’m on one line.  Then to the left of the stripes, I’m on another line.  And I have to figure out how to read it backwards on the wrong side rows.  It took me about an hour to knit the first 4 rows of the heel flap last night.  I finally put it away.  Oy!

Those racing stripes in my sock (one of my two needle juncture points) aren’t super tidy.  I’m hoping blocking will help.  They  Here’s the other side, which is even messier at the join:

I’m not super worried about it yet, mostly due to the Yarn Harlot’s recent post about just this very thing.  That was well-timed and very comforting to me, Stephanie!

RIP Tangled Garden, Hello Culture

After a ridiculous amount of consideration, I’ve decided to abandon the Tangled Garden sock pattern.  The sizing wasn’t right and the floats were simply too long for a sock.  My success with the colorful felted bag was the final nail in Tangled Garden’s coffin – it helped me decide that the problem was more with the pattern than with my two-color knitting technique.

I took one final photo before RIPPING this baby out: Buh-bye!

Instead, Pam and I have settled on another stranded colorwork sock, using the same pink and green yarn.  I laboriously reskeined the old yarn so I could give it a bath to straighten out all the kinks.  Then I rewound the skeins into balls again.  I needed a truly fresh start on this project.

We’ve chosen Culture Socks by Elinor Brown.  The stitch pattern is wonderful (floats are not too long!) but the heel and sole sassiness is what sold me (this is Elinor’s photo):

As a bonus, I already had this pattern, since it was a reward for participating in the Socks Revived contest in 2010 (where I entered my Night Gulls pattern).

I’m still uncertain whether I’m knitting the right size.  I went for the middle one, which has 80 stitches at the cast-on edge but decreases to 75 later on in the leg.  I upped my needle size from last time and am using a 2.5 mm (it seems SO BIG!). You can’t tell because of the rolling, but I’m into the culture stitch pattern a few rounds.  We’ll see.  I’m so dubious about whether non-stretchy socks will actually fit and not be all slouchy and yucky.

But I am determined to deliver a pair of satisfactory socks to Pam early in 2011!

Cerisara update later this weekend (by the way, it’s pronounced “Sarah Sarah”).

Tangled garden begins to grow

This past weekend, I began the Tangled Garden socks that Pam won in the Get Out the Vote contest.  This pattern grows slowly, but it’s growing!  I’ve set myself a daily goal of 10 rounds.  (Told you it was slow.)

Things I like about this project so far:

• The yarn!  Allison’s Simply Sock Yarn Solids are wonderful to work with.  The blend is 80/20 wool/nylon, and I really appreciate that she added nylon for strength.  But the yarn doesn’t feel like it has nylon in it – it has the spring, sproinginess, and softness of a superwash merino.  Lovely.
• The color choices.  S1 did a great job of selecting a pink and a green that work well together and are very “Pam.”

Things that are challenging me so far:

• I am tied to the chart.  The colorwork is not regular, so I can’t glance at the chart and think “3 pink, 1 green” and do that all the way around.  I have to be very careful to follow the chart.
• I’m still getting the hang of managing floats.  I have trouble “turning the corner” between needles and I’ve got some tight spots there.  I’m trying to compensate, which may mean I have some loose floats.  And there are some very long stretches of pink on some rounds (as many as 10 stitches!), which means I have to catch the float behind a stitch every 4 stitches or so to keep them from getting too long.
• I’m fretting that it won’t fit. Normally for a woman’s sock, I cast on about 64 and use 2.0 mm needles.  This is colorwork, so it can be a bit less stretchy (if the floats aren’t long enough), plus you have the added bulk of the floats on the inside of the sock.  The pattern calls for 72 stitches, which is good.  And I used a 2.25 mm needle.  The sock looks big to me, but I think that’s because there is no ribbing to pull in the cuff.  I’ve tried it on and I think it will work.  But just to be safe, I’m going to put the stitches on waste yarn after finishing the cuff and MAIL it to Pam for a fitting in Cleveland!

This project is definitely a technique builder for me.  If anyone has any colorwork tips, I’m listening!

Yarn delivery

After a deliciously agonizing period of deliberation, I’ve made some choices about solid sock yarns from Simply Socks Yarn Company (part of my winnings!) for two projects in my near future.

First, Pam chose this Tangled Garden pattern for her prize socks: We picked the colors “pink” and “wheatgrass” for these:

And S1 settled on the colors “green,” “mocha,” “brick,” and “chocolate” for her Mad for Plaid fraternal quadruplet socks:

These are going to be FUN!

Piquant Pam

You may be wondering what ever happened to Pam’s prize socks.  I sent her a bunch of links and a few questions to begin what I assumed would be a lengthy consultation about what type of socks she would love.  She emailed me back super fast (in way under an hour) and sent a link for a Knitty.com pattern called Tangled Garden: Knitty.com readers know that the difficulty index goes like this:

THE KNITTY LEVEL OF DIFFICULTY INDEX [Kind of like a menu. But not really.]

Suitable for beginners.
Relaxing, not mentally taxing.
Knitting as therapy.

Tired of scarves? Ready for something more challenging? Try these.
Fun things with zing. A twist, even.

A little something for the seasoned knitter.
Daring but not exhausting.

Suitable for those with a lot of experience. Or patience. Or both.
These babies have teeth.
Hoo boy.

All I have to say is, thank goodness Pam is only Piquant and not Extraspicy!

Seriously, though, this pattern will stretch my skills a bit and be really fun to knit.  Plus, I can use Allison’s Simply Sock Yarn Solids for them, which is completely fitting, given that the Summer of Color contest also utilized that yarn.

Pam wanted pink and green, as shown in the pattern photo, but she deferred to S1 to select the yarns from the color cards (which Pam can’t see herself as she is in Cleveland).  S1 deemed Pink and Wheatgrass to be best, so that is how we shall proceed.  Here is what the sample yarns look like when I scan them (I think they’re a little more vibrant in real life): I will need to place an order soon!