Saturday, April 19, 2014

Happy feet 2 of 5

By the time I'd finished knitting a pair of socks in fingering weight yarn with Dream in Color's yarn, and wishing I'd gotten a better fit....I decided knitting socks wasn't as painful as I'd remembered, and I wanted to have another go at it.  Plus, what better way to reinforce some of the techniques I'd learned (Cat Borhi's CO, afterthought heel), than to jump right back on the horse and do it again.  Yeah, I'd have to go back and read up, watch videos, etc...but it'd be easier this time around, right?

I'd discovered independent dyer Verdant Gryphon, and had seen where people just raved over their yarns, their dyes, etc.  Ordered some up to try, including their fingering weight Eidos.  Now I was a little concerned that there was no nylon in the yarn (you'll often see recommendations to use yarn containing nylon to provide some extra strength/durability), but the yarn had a lot of twist to it compared to other fingering weight yarns, and just feels "tougher".  I was a little worried that might mean these weren't very soft, but figured it was worth a shot.

And check out those colors - Shango is the orange color, while Whales was one of their Winter 2014 limited colorways...  LOVE the Whales!


Last time I knit 1x1 ribbing the entire way up the top of the foot.  This time I played around with what I thought could look like the knuckles or bones, knitting a wider (3x2?) ribbing for just a ways over where the toes meet the foot, going back to stockinette for awhile, then back to the 3x2 ribbing for a longer stretch, but not running it all the way up the leg.  Fun and different, and made it a little less monotonous.  ALSO made it a little difficult to knit blindly while watching tv...

These turned out great!  They're a better fit (I believe I CO fewer stitches AND increased to a smaller total count?  I really need to go back and check...), and the height was much better.  I've worn these quite a bit actually.



I really enjoy knitting socks toe-up so I get a better feel of just how much yarn I have left as I'm going along.  I took a risk and didn't split the skein into two balls, but with the addition of the Shango toes and heels, wasn't at risk of running out of Whales before finishing.

Cat Bordhi's Magic Cast On was much easier this time around.  And I tried a different method of doing the afterthought heel - just knitting the sock toe-to-bind-off, not even thinking "where will the waste yarn for the heel go?", and then when the tube sock is done, CUT INTO THE YARN where the heel will go (you're freaking out, right?), pull out yarn and pick up stitches, then knit the afterthought heel!  I will advise against trying this for the first time with a fingering weight yarn in a DARK colorway, especially while it's still a bit wintery and dark out in the evenings...  NO amount of light made this fun...but it was very nice not adding in the waste yarn.

I've also learned how to avoid the ugly color dots/blips when changing yarn color during ribbing - just skip the ribbing on the row where you're changing the yarn color - do all knits the whole way around (but maybe a little more loose than usual).  No more ugly color dots!

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