More Socks. Can You Believe It?

I'm knitting another pair of socks.

It's the Riot of Color (Rav link) pattern from Around the World...  and I guess it's okay... I'm not loving it as much as I liked the Herringbone Socks or the By the Fjords I made for StrungUp at Christmas.  But it's good mindless television-watching knitting while the weather's too warm to work on Fireside.

This photo doesn't do justice to the beautiful colors of this sock yarn.  The blue/purple one (it's more blue than purple in real life, I think) is Happy Feet.  The blue-green one is a gorgeous hand-dyed creation from Fleur de Fiber, a yarn that is only available at Windy Knitty in Chicago.  My college-alumni-group Secret Santa sent it to me, and it is goooooorgeous.  I would definitely buy this yarn for myself (although I wish it had some nylon in it for strength; I fear a hole in the heel because the Fleur de Fiber is 100% wool).  Part of the point of this pattern is to use two very-saturated yarns that are pretty close together hue-wise, and I'm quite happy with the result.  Like I said, the photo doesn't really capture the great colorplay happening here.

This is a sock with both a gusset and a short-row heel, weirdly enough.  I guess it works in concept, but... meh.  The coolest part about this pattern is, regrettably, the cast-on edge, with this cool twisty-trick happening at the top of the sock.

Anyway, I'm a little more than halfway through the first sock.  It's moving along far more slowly than the Herringbone Socks, which I completed in a whopping five days.  The chart-following, I suppose, takes longer than just memorizing an 8-stitch pattern.

These might be a gift.  They might be for me.  I haven't decided.  I'll probably make them to fit me, but since I've got a pretty average-sized foot, I can give them to someone else if the mood strikes me.  I do have a few folks in mind.

Conversion? Or Experimentation?

Soooooo I made another pair of socks.

I wasn't really planning to do it -- I was feeling inspired to knit, and really wanted to work on my Fireside sweater, but we were having a heatwave.  And I actually tried to knit it for a while while it was 90-something (32+ for you Celsius-dwellers) in my living room, but I just couldn't handle the weight and the wool on my lap.  It just wasn't working for me.  I needed to make something lighter.  Something smaller.  Something... more sock-like.

Out came my Knitted Socks from Around the World, the only patterns that have ever succeeded in getting me interested in making socks.  I picked the Herringbone Sock pattern.  A classic.  The next morning (when the light was good) I picked yarn from the stash.  The green is Happy Feet, the blue is Malabrigo Sock.  I dug out my size 2 needles, only to discover that one was broken and one was missing -- sooo I had to make an emergency dash to Kaleidoscope that afternoon.  But then I was ready.  Ball wound, stitches cast-on... and the pair took me a whole five days to knit.  I was like a machine.  A sock-knitting machine.

They're really warm and comfy.  Maybe the weather will get cold again and I can wear them someday.

Seriously, y'all, I used to hate making socks.  I think it's the colorwork that's changed my mind.  Something's changed, anyway.  I might have to start using phrases like "it was so fun to make these!" or "I might like knitting socks after all!"

We'll see.  It might just be a temporary thing.  But it might be the real deal.

Gratification

Christmas and the first few weeks of January have taken a lot out of me.  I've already had two trips down to Connecticut and one to Florida -- and a good bit of travel knitting to show for it.  But that's for another post.

First I want to give you all a bit of gratification: I know you've been on the edge of your seats to find out what the sneak peek project was.  It's SOCKS!  Specifically, it's By the Fjords (Rav link), from Stephanie Van Der Linden's Around the World in Knitted Socks.

StrungUp and I were in Nido about a month before Christmas, and she picked up the book (she's a sucker for sock patterns; you know how *I* feel about knitting socks -- or, used to feel) and started leafing through it.  I looked over her shoulder and... well, we both oohed and ahhed for a good half-hour.  Almost every pattern in the book is something one or both of us want to knit.  We especially remarked about By the Fjords, and I came back a couple of days later and bought two copies of the book: one for StrungUp, one for me.  And then I bought the yarn.

The brown is Claudia Handpaints.  Knowing that StrungUp's frustration with Claudia is that it's 100% wool (no nylon, no longevity!  Who makes a sock yarn that's going to make holey sock? Claudia, apparently).  I held double with a 100% Rayon thread for the heel.

The red and the green stripe are both Happy Feet.  I needed two skeins of the brown, and one skein of the red (and one of the green, technically, but it's such a negligible amount that I barely think it's worth counting).

I really liked knitting with both of these, and have already bought more brown Claudia and more Happy Feet so I can do more patterns from this amazing book.  You hear that?  I WANT TO KNIT MORE SOCKS.  I think it had something to do with the stranded knitting.

Seriously, isn't this so cool?  So gorgeous?  It was a tricky pattern.  I had to think.  I may have had to fudge things.  I may have had to get creative to make the awesome swirly toe work.  And I loved every minute of it.

I'm totally knitting these for myself sometime, too.  LOVE.  I cannot wait to knit about 2/3 of the patterns in this book.

Merry Christmas, StrungUp!  And everyone else!