Friday, October 28, 2011

Warm toes: the plan

The other day Trish was over having a look at the SuperSecret ColourWorky project in process (yes, expect cruel teasers in the coming days) and I thoughtlessly glanced up to a basket on a cabinet and said "Check out my queue basket."


We both looked at it a minute and I said Actually, that's not the whole queue.  I have all that bulky handspun from the summer I'm supposed to knit into cowls for Christmas presents.  That's just the socks.

Trish said Mary, you will never get all those socks done by Christmas.

I said Trish, I will never get all those socks done in a year.

We won't discuss my subsequent panic over not being able to find the handspun (it turned out to be in a similar basket on top of another cabinet, which I mention here only to remind myself where it is when I get time to start all those cowls).  Anyway, it only served to distract me from drawing the conclusion that I need to stop buying sock yarn.  (golly, do I really need to stop buying sock yarn???)

Within a couple of days the weather turned cold here - seriously cold - which means my Vesper stripeys are no longer warm enough inside my unlined Blundstone boots.  It's time to go to the seriously warm socks, of which I have just four pairs.  Yes.  Four.  That's a lot of handwashing and even then, one is too long in the foot, another is too short in the leg, a third is a little snug all over and still manages to slip down inside the boots... you get the picture.

Here is the revised queue basket, with the Vesper stripeys taken out.  All six of these projects will be warm enough to get me through to snowstorm season when I have to give up and wear my thermal lined boots (at which point I have also to give up wool socks and go with cotton athletic ones, sigh.)


But only three are bulky enough to be superfast to knit, and I think it's fair to say that speed is of the essence.


Referring to my past projects on Ravelry - what few I thought to note needle size for, GAH - it appears that I can use 2.75mm needles for all of these (fast!) and cast on just 56sts (superfast!).  So that's the plan.  Speed knitting of warm socks.  Once the SuperSecret ColourWorkys are done.  Which, if I type fast enough here, will be after lunch today.

Meanwhile, have a good weekend, with my best wishes for warm toes!

1 comment:

Kathleen Taylor said...

If your boots will accommodate worsted weight yarn, you can knit warm and comfy socks very quickly using just 48 sts on Size 5 Needles (not sure of the metric equivalent off the top of my head, but 2.75mm equals the smaller size 2s that I use for most of my sock knitting).