Monday, September 21, 2015

When striped socks don't match

I made good progress on my cousin's socks last week, but I hit a bit of a puzzlement when I got to the end of the leg and prepared to do the contrasting heel flap.


Where to make the break?  Ideally in a striped sock, the solid heel will stand out a bit.  I will gladly adjust the length of a leg to ensure that the heel falls either at the start of its colour in the stripe repeat, or in the middle of the colour the farthest from it (in this case, the deepest shade of hot pink.)

But with these socks, I have one of each.  The stripe managed to shift just enough in each sock that when I got to the heel, there was no way to keep the heel shift consistent.

So: I made a virtue of necessity.


I went with what the socks gave me, and I started the heels in those two places. 

It doesn't make a difference to the stripe problem, but it's also worth mentioning that after knitting I don't know how many socks with eight rounds for the ribbing, I managed to knit one of these two socks with just six.  Six!  What was I thinking?  And it took me ages to notice, too.  I couldn't figure out why the socks were the same length even though one sock was two rounds shorter from the cuff than the other.  Whoops.


Yes, I know mr. sock twins, ha ha ha on me.


I'm just grateful you're sleep socks.

Anyway, my cousin was over the other day and I showed them to her because a/ I wanted to make sure I got the foot length right and b/ these are so very much not her colours I wanted to prevent an unpleasant surprise when she unwraps them.  But as it turns out, she loves them!

(also, and this is not news, she is a super gracious person.)


Hope you've had a great weekend, and if I don't see you tomorrow, it's because I am hard at work trying to get these babies done so I can start her husband's and finish those too, before she has to fly home again.  Whew!


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