Monday 17 March 2008

Second socks finished!

Sing hurrah for my second pair of socks is finished!


These took slightly less time than the first pair, thankfully. I started them on my trip to Riga in mid-February, and finished them only a month later. That is and is likely to remain some kind of record for me. Oh, I know I was in the middle of the Tofutsies socks, but I wanted to try a new type of heel, the Sherman, and the Tofutsies ones are a different stitch count and I didn't feel brave enough to have to recalculate that for my first go.

The yarn is from Skein Queen on Etsy, who is a lovely seller from the New Forest, with excellent customer service and gorgeous yarn. I confess to having several skeins of her cashmere/silk just for stroking purposes. This merino sock yarn base is called "Divine" and it certainly is, being an absolute delight to knit. It glides through the hand and is not splitty at all. The colourway is "Clam" (not sure why) which is vibrant, jewel-toned blue, purple, pink and green. Just wonderful and even non-knitters have commented on it. My only sadness is that the colours did lose some of their vibrancy when knitted up - I think like quite a few variegated yarns it looks better in the skein.  Here's the skein versus another picture of the socks looking less vibrant:



But they're still pretty and I like them very much indeed.

For my last socks I made a list of items for improvement and I think I've nailed a fair few of these. I used 60 stitches again but on 2.75mm needles which has sorted out the slightly loose gauge and slightly too baggy problems. As mentioned above I used the Sherman heel, which for me was much faster than short-rowing once I'd got my head around the concepts involved, and really has nipped those holes in the bud. For the cast off I had my last round of 2x2 rib as kfb k1 pfb p1 before casting off normally but with a 4mm needle, which has made it lovely and stretchy. I think this will be my regular pattern for a plain sock from now on. I still have loads left over though, but better than running out. I still want sock blockers.  Oh, and I'm still absolutely devoted to toe-up!

Must knit more, one pair in a month is in no way going to dent that stash!

2 comments:

stash haus said...

You are such a tease! 3 headlines and no entry! Hope you have a great time in the Big Apple.

Denise said...

yay finished a pair of socks! Good for you - I seem to remember a post with a sofa full of lovely, virginal, untouched sock yarn - I'm glad you've popped that cherry (oo-err)