Wednesday, July 15, 2015

Yarn Along 2015.27: Manly Socks

Happy Wednesday!  The weather at this little place here currently is sunny (YAY!!), mid-sixties, and a light breeze.  A bit cool for my tomato and pepper plants, but lovely feeling to me.

I'm joining in with Ginny for this week's Yarn Along.

Last week I mentioned having started a new pair of socks while on (sorta) vacation.  I had gotten a whopping 3 rows of cuff done on sock #1 when I had to pack up my knitting and make the long drive home. It was a few days after returning home before I was able to pick up my knitting again, and when I took my barely-begun sock out of my knitting bag, I was dismayed to find that one of my dpns had lost all 24 of it's stitches in transit.

Oh bummer!

I decided, since socks have a small number of stitches per round, and since this was a k1 p1 pattern, to just go ahead and frog the whole sock rather than take the time to attempt to pick up 1/3 of the sock without a) messing up the pattern and b) having 24 dropped stitches travel down multiple rows while I was trying to stuff the needle back through them.  So I ripped out all my 'progress' and didn't even feel bad about doing so.

Over last weekend, I began again.  And I dug up a pair of point protectors to keep my stitches on their needles when my knitting is just sitting around waiting to be worked on.  I'm not sure what happened before; if it was the traveling, or if it is this particular yarn--it's kind of slippery and new to me--that caused the dropped stitches disaster.  Anyhow, that problem seems to be fixed now, and despite it's wont to slip a bit, I do like the yarn.

I am using (hopefully) 2 skeins of Knit Picks Comfy Fingering yarn in the colorway Planetarium to make a pair of Petty Harbour socks intended as a birthday gift for my Dad this fall.  I say hopefully because the total yardage of the skeins is somewhat less than the total yardage the pattern calls for.  Typically I have quite a bit leftover when I make socks, even if the pattern says it uses the same yardage as the skein I am using, so I'm hoping that what I have on hand is enough.  My back up plan is to order another skein if I have to, but I'm hoping that will be unnecessary.  Because it's silly to order just one skein when you can have free shipping if you order lots of skeins. . . and I have more than enough yarn in my stash currently.  Or so I'm telling myself in my present cash-strapped and crowded-housed state.

My dad is allergic to wool, which is why I decided to go with the Comfy yarn instead of the superwash wool sock yarns I've used in the past.  Comfy is cotton and acrylic.  Like I mentioned above, it seems to be more slippery to work with than wool.  It also feels really stretchy the more of the leg of the sock I knit up.  I hope it won't end up baggy when worn.  I don't know about Dad, but socks than bag and bunch up drive me nuts to wear.

Petty Harbour in the lilies

As you can see in the picture, I've managed to get quite a bit knit up in just a few hours.  I'm half-way through the leg all ready.  The pattern is a very easy to memorize 4-row repeat and I'm sure that is why I've gotten as far along as I have in a short time.



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