Meet the Flintstones and Sock Madness ~ Part Cuatro

THANKS for the kind words of encouragement re: Sock Madness M*Cow Socks!!!!!!

Okay, I haven’t been blogging much lately. I haven’t been knitting much lately either. Work has been very demanding, more so than ever before, and other unfortunate events have also occurred.

Since I’m not ready to talk much about the unfortunate events, I might as well not talk about work either. Nonetheless, these are my excuses for not doing much blogging or knitting.

Here is what hubby got for his birthday from his bro’ in Chicago:

How cute are these?!?!?!?!?!

Two demitasse cup sets with his name on them:

They cracked me up!! I LOVE pottery of all kinds, and I have a fairly largish collection of fairly largish coffee mugs. Most of which are still in boxes because we have room for either books or pottery on the shelves, and hubby chose books. Well, we both did, actually.

So it pretty much cracked me up that his bro’ sent more pottery, which can be the bane of hubby’s existence, because I have pottery on every surface of the house. Yuk, yuk, ha ha!! I have more pottery than yarn if that is to be believed. And since I am admitting it, you should believe it.

Anyway, these cute little cups are from a place in Chicago that sells stuff salvaged from hotels and restaurants, and these babies had hubby’s name on them, so of course, bro’-in-law grabbed ‘em.

Alright, now that we had a chuckle about that, here is something un-chuckable: the complete and utter lack of progress on the MCow socks for Sock Madness.

Last week I had this:

Close-up:

I did NOT dig these holes in the right side of the heel:

So of course I frogged:

Then I reworked the heel and got to this point:

But let me tell you, these things are SO NOT going to fit me or ANYONE I know. Wah, wah, wah!!!!!

Look, this sock is nine inches in circumference around the ribbing, a bit wider, a small bit, around the leg, and the same small bit wider on the foot. The green thing you see sticking up out of the cuff is my Ban deodorant. Not exactly the largest circular vessel in my house. Certainly nothing compared to my tree-trunk-like legs. Okay, so it’s not gripping the Ban deodorant like a vise; there is some stretchability going on here. But not to a size 10.

Alright, so the toes on the mock foot aren't so Flintstone-like. My toes are. Flat stubs across the top so my foot looks almost like a rectangle. But hey. At least they give hubby some fodder for jokes, and a tune to play on the guitar.

I doubt my smallest framed niece can get this on her foot. My youngest niece is around 10 or 11 years old and has a size 8 foot. My smallest framed niece is 23 years old or so, and she also has a size 8 foot. I’m fairly confident she won’t grow any more, but I don’t think this will fit her. And although the 10 year old kid will grow a lot more, I don’t think it will fit her either even though she is way younger.

What to do, what to do? I KNEW I should have cast on more stitches at the get-go and went up a needle size. Grrrrrrr, grrrrrrr, grrrrrrr!!!!

I am going to end up frogging the whole damn thing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Which is why this sock will continue to be a WIP, sitting alone and forlorn on my dinning room table, on top of a mock foot instead of warmly covering my cold piggies until I can decide WHAT. TO. DO!!! :-(

This is just too bad because the pattern is so darn cute, and I do really dig these colors, and I think this yarn might be pretty sturdy and long wearing even if it's not the softest yarn I ever felt.

Sock Madness ~ Part Three

Here is the yarn I chose for the first pair of socks for Sock Madness:

It is Wildfoote fingering weight by Lamb’s Pride. This is the only fingering weight I could find that came in a solid color at any YS in the county where I live, and the shop had only two skeins of solid color (thank heavens they were purple) and only one skein of a decent contrast that would work with the solid.

I tell ya', if the shop had something like yellow or brown in a solid, I would have given up and not even bought the yarn for this pair. If this had been the case, I would have had to use some sage Rowan I have in my stash that I plan on using for Birch Leaves socks, and this would have saddened me immensely. Purple is my favorite color, so it was somewhat fortuitous that I found these solids!!!

The pattern calls for one skein each of solid and variegated. I picked up two skeins of purple (solid) in addition to the primary-color variegated, however, because I did not think 100 grams of fingering weight would produce socks large enough for an adult foot. (Yes, that is a purple there even though it looks like a raisin color.) The shop had lots of Fleece Artist variegated in lighter pastel colors that oddly enough looked pretty awful next to the purple.

I believe my calculations are correct because this sock, although knit according to the limited specs in the pattern (no gauge), certainly is too small for my foot. Yes, it will fit a woman with a size 7 foot, but I know of no such women in this area. Most everyone around here has at least a size 9 foot.

After finishing the ribbed cuff, I knew there was no way in h*ll this sock would fit me (I used that tried and true method of making a fist and trying to squeeze said fist into the cuff opening to no avail); hence I debated increasing the number of cast-on stitches to at least 62 or moving up to a larger size needle, say a U.S. 2, but we are supposed to knit the pattern as written, so moving up a needle size may not have solved my size problem while sticking with the fingering weight, and I was worried about holes or loose looking stitches if I simply moved up a needle size rather than increasing the number of cast-on stitches.

Plus, even though I have three skeins of yarn, the variegated figures into the mix fairly regularly, so I am not sure I would have enough yarn to finish two socks if I move up a needle size. There has been much debate over at Flickr regarding the number of stripes ~ some think the leg has four stripes, while others believe it to be five. The pattern was a bit vague in the directions in this area although some claim the directions are pretty clear. As with all instructions, interpretation is everything, and experience here counts an awful lot. I have to think, though, first time sock knitters, or inexperienced sock knitters probably had lots of problems and suffered through a lot of unnecessary frustration.

Here’s what I have so far:

Although the circumference of the cuff is nine inches, I doubt the heel and foot area will work with a larger size foot, say 10 or 11. I have it in mind to gift these to my niece of the Fir Cone Scarf because she is petite (5' 4" or so), and she also digs purple. But she wears a size 8 shoe. Will these fit do you imagine?

I realize I am probably out of this competition already due to the funeral and all the events surrounding it, especially since I cast on late Saturday evening (EST) and knit only the first two rounds of the cuff’s ribbing, while others spent most of their day knitting and finished the pair. On Sunday I committed a few hours to knitting and got as far as the fourth band of color repeat, leaving the fifth band for today, and this evening while watching Conan I began the short row heel.

The front is cute:

But I am not really digging the way the color jogs at the end slash beginning of each row. Nothing I’ve tried will eliminate this jog. Ordinarily I try to knit everything in the round if possible and will go to great lengths to convert patterns to rounds if at all possible, and I use color extensively, yet I’ve never run into this problem before where the jog is so glaringly evident. I don’t like it one bit. Take a look:

It looks like a sloppy-assed seam.

If I remember correctly from some of the comments on Flickr, others have run into this problem too. At first I thought it was the yarn I picked; then I thought it was the needle size. Maybe it is because I am carrying the yarn rather than trying to deal with weaving in a gazillion ends with the frequent shifts in color. I'd hate to cut the ends and go for the weave job on the next sock only to end up with the same problem.

If I am going to have to gift these because I will never get my Sasquatch feet into them I want them to look a bit nicer. Plus, from the photos I've seen so far in the Flickr group, the short row heel looks very loose and pointy as though there is too much fabric in the heel, and most of the socks have significant holes in the heel area at the short row line (to be more exact, the dart line). This may be due to speed knitting, or it may be due to the pattern, or it may be due to skill with short rows ~ hard to know. We'll see what I come up with tomorrow or the next day.

Grrrrrrrr.

Sock Madness ~ Part Deux

For Pete’s sake, I can’t believe what I got myself into!! I was reading Jo’s blog a couple of weeks ago, and she wrote about a sock contest she had entered. Well, I like socks, and a contest is always good, so I thought, why not? I clicked on the link, found the blog, and on the very last day, mind you, I signed up. I doubted I would be among the chosen few, or the 128 chosen few to be exact, but I dutifully sent in my email with the appropriate info, and I made it in! This should be a good thing, as Martha says.

BUT. And herein lies the but, this is an elimination contest for speed knitting. Well, of course I can knit socks with the best of them or even the worst of them. But speed knitting is a whole ‘nother story. Plus because I have knit more than five pairs of socks, I am considered an ‘experienced’ sock knitter. Okay, I’ll buy that in a heartbeat. But fast, I am not. I am lucky if I can bang out one sock a month, let alone a pair.

A few days ago my category’s list was posted, so I took a gander at my competition, which will be mano-a-mano or hand to hand combat. Aye carumba!!! These other knitters are going to kick my slow arse all over town!!! It’s all over but for the crying, and we haven’t even started yet.

Although a swift and sudden death is assured, I nonetheless went out to an almost LYS last Sunday and pawed through (and yes, sniffed) their stock in an effort to arm myself for the battle to come. This very lovely pequeño shop carries yarn I have been dying to get my hands on or at least set my eyes on ~ Fleece Artist. Alright, so for many of you spoiled readers you will say ‘Hrrrruuummmph, I use Fleece Artist for all of my socks.' Well, until now, none of the LYSs carried it, not even the LYSs on the other side of town. So I was quite thrilled to find out some could be had with an eight mile drive.

Here is what I ended up with:

Yes, that is Fleece Artist. And BEHOLD ~ my all time favorite fingering weight, Schaefer’s Anne. Oolala!!! I was in yarn heaven. Not only did they carry all sorts of Fleece Artist, but there was almost an abundance of Anne. They also had Debbie Bliss, and reader, beware, Rowan of all weights and colors imaginable. Halleluiah!!!!!!!!!!

It is true that I am on a yarn diet, or at least I have pledged to be on a yarn diet. But Wendy so kindly stated I can have a wild card, and sock yarn doesn’t count in the diet. My rules said fingering weight (lace-weight) yarn didn’t count because I have so little of the stuff, which is why I needed to procure some for the contest. So I am still well within bounds of my knitting from my stash commitment even though I bought all these babies. Oh, of course you need a closer look:

It’s pretty likely that my competition will knock me out within the first two days (I didn’t realize the competition was sudden-death, or in non-hockey overtime lingo, the first 16 per category to score finish a pair of socks wins the round), but that’s cool. I’ve sacrificed myself for less. As those cheerleaders say, bring it on!