Friday, December 2, 2016

Jan loves socks

I'm stating the obvious for most of us here with that post title.  Who doesn't love socks in early December, in a country where December is code for 'really really cold but not quite as awful as January which is coming very soon'?


Jan pretty much only wears purple so as you may recall, I tried to source a purple-friendly sock stripe for her, and in the end I just asked her what she liked, and she picked this yarn.  The gift element is not only that I knit them for her birthday this year instead of some future year when I got around to it, but also, that I knit them in less than two weeks because I forgot when her birthday is and started almost too late.  I haven't pulled off something like that in a LONG time.  Definitely not since starting the renovation.

She was thrilled to have them and I was thrilled to see them go because for some reason, in the finishing, they gave me trouble.

Okay, I know what 'some' reason is.  It's the black stripe and the fact that I used that colour as my border for the cast on.  (click here for an explanation of how I cast on a stripey sock for maximum potential symmetry.)  I love black and wear it a ton, but it really, really stands out against other colours when you're running an end through the back stitches.


I don't love how much it shows here, on the wrong side, but I super hugely did not love how much it showed on the front the first five times I tried to hide the tails. 

Another weird thing happened with the other sock.  I never do this, but I guess because it was a gift sock I managed to stitch part of the tail over the right side of the ribbing while trying to hide the tail.  I didn't even notice it until I was taking the THEY'RE DONE pictures.  Maybe Jan won't notice.  Maybe you won't, either.


So just in case, I've drawn on this big arrow that points directly to a small horizontal yarn line.


Maybe I should have kept quiet about it instead?  Never mind, here's the really strange part - the tail was black, so how come this botched, all-wrong stitch is blue?  You don't think I accidentally knit it into the ribbing when I first started the socks, do you?

On the bright side, one thing did go well for me this time.  I remembered to take a good look at the heels and wind off some matching excess yarn for Jan to use for darning, should they ever wear through.


Jan is protecting the handknit socks I've been giving her with a fierceness matched only by my determination to knit socks till the end of time and thereby bore you all to tears.  (this is where I remind you that I spent last night knitting fingerless mitts so I can share their pattern with you, in the hopes that you don't throw tomatoes at your screen.)  She has darned pretty much every pair - okay, there's another weird thing, because the only time I ran through a pair of Vesper-yarn socks was with the very first pair I made and wore constantly because I had only two or three pairs in rotation, and even then it was several years before it happened.

Anyway: I am in the market for a nice darning egg to give her on some future present-giving occasion, so if you know of a good source, I am all ears.


Well, this post pretty much brings us up to speed on all the little projects I finished recently, which means that next week, I get to show you how my Green Sock Obsession came out and what I got obsessed with immediately afterward and also, possibly, how to knit my fingerless mitts.  We can but hope.

Have a great weekend and I'll see you again in a few days!



2 comments:

Laurinda said...

Those are lovely, & that funny little line proves that they are handknit with care,not machine knit with indifference.
Usually I'm a bright colors kind of girl, the more eye-searing, the better. But the brown in that colorway is so...luscious? Smooth? Warm? I don't know what word I'm looking for, probably because it's for a color that never comes up on my radar. But I really like it, especially the large chunk of it on the heel :-)

Mary Keenan said...

I'm with you Laurinda, that is a really nice brown. Kind of a caramel or a toffee... and a nice fit with the other colours. This is another thing I love about Vesper Sock yarn (on top of how incredibly comfortable it is when knit up) - the way Julia puts together these very interesting combinations!