Socks Of Betrayal

I had really hoped that I would be knitting a new pair of socks in October also known as Socktober. I had grand visions of using orange yarn. Perhaps my skein of Miss Babs Yummy 2-ply in the Biker Chick color or maybe my skein of Baah! La Jolla in the California Poppy color. I was making such great progress on the Sock Lover's Socks that there was no reason not to believe that I could be casting on fresh socks by the first week of October. We are just about done with the 2nd week of October and I am still knitting these wretched socks. Let it be known that the pattern is fine. It's the yarn that is the problem, specifically the dark grey yarn I paired with the self striping. It is a black hole of disappointment. A vortex of woe. It has betrayed me.

I had knit the entire sock all the way to the toe. I counted my stitches as I usually do before I cut the yarn. 16-17-18, good. 18 stitches on the top. 16-17.... 17?!? I was prepared to let go of my usual need for sock perfection, but I just had to know where that missing stitch went. I could have sworn that completed the gusset without any trouble with the right number of stitches. (There was loads of trouble with some mysterious section that kept being lumpy and tight which switched locations three times in between fixings... but that is besides the point.) And then I saw it... the dropped stitch. I know it is possible to mend a dropped stitch, but this one was on a wear point on the bottom of the foot and it was so very far down.

The marker on the bottom of the foot is holding the dropped stitch

So I ripped and reknit.... only to have the yarn betray me a second time! Another dropped stitch. I have no idea how this keeps happening, but I have just about had it. If both sets of my sock needles weren't taken up, I would have revenge cast on a sock already! As it stands, I'm trying to be disciplined and finish, but it sure is stressful knitting.

Can you see the stitches? Neither can I.

Meanwhile I am busy designing. Of course the project has been ripped even more than the socks. Each rip leads me to a better version of the pattern, but I would be lying if I didn't say that I am looking forward to knitting something entirely different.

I Must Really Love Ripping Socks

My Sock Lover's Socks are coming out quite well. It's my only project on the needles at the moment, so I've been able to devote all of my knitting time to them. But they hit a snag about a week ago. Of course all my socks seem to have complications, so I'm not sure why I was surprised. I guess I was feeling pretty confident about having knit so many stranded socks in the past months. Surely I had made all the mistakes I could.

The saga began while knitting the sock on the left. As with all stranded color work socks, I thought it was a good idea to try it on as I went to make sure it fit right. It fit great (hurrah!), but then I noticed that the colored stripes nearly disappeared. Now, you would think that after knitting two different pairs of stranded socks I would have gotten a handle on yarn dominance. (A note on yarn dominance: I knit using two hands when I do stranded color work. In the typical knitter, the left hand holds the dominant strand.)

Before the reckoning

You can see on the left, the grey is the dominant color, while on the right, the colored stripes are dominate. Well, wouldn't you know it, if a pattern is regular, like vertical stripes, the color in my left hand is the dominant one. But, if a pattern is somewhat irregular, like an image of a sock shape, the yarn held in my right hand is the dominant one. Apparently, I'm a very special brand of knitter.

Before I ripped out the first sock, I started knitting the second one with the grey held in my left hand and the color in my right. It seemed to fix it, which is good. I'm much happier with how the pattern is appearing on the socks now. Super bonus: some of the rounds on the first sock had been a little tight for my taste. Having the yarn dominance be off made it easier to rip.

Monkeying Around

After a diligent bit of knitting, my Monkey Socks are done. I used White Birch Fiber Art's 80/20 merino nylon self striping yarn in the Sugarbush color way. I believe Lisa does special requests, so if she's out of something, go ahead and ask.

The joke at knit night is that I'm a little anal about my self striping yarn when it comes to socks. It has to match exactly or I'm driven nuts. I thought that it would be a challenge getting these ones to match., but I was pleasantly surprised that it only required mild adjustments to make my stripes exactly the same. On the second sock, I only did 10.5 of the 11 rounds of the 6th repeat before the heel. And when I reached the toe, I only needed two extra knit rounds before starting the decreases.

A big thank-you to Connor for not only suggesting we take sock pictures in the rocks, but took the pictures for me. To get this shot, I wasn't comfortable at all.

What we do for our sock pictures, right?

At the moment, Pente is the most worn sweater I have knit

In other sock-related news, I cast on for my Sock Lover's Socks. Connor helped me wind the skein of Patons Kroy in the Blue Stripe Ragg color way into a ball so I could see the color progression better. The dark blue doesn't show up against the dark grey, so I'm cutting that bit out.

Scooter got a bath, so he is nice and clean... for now