Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Knits

I recently mentioned finishing my second pair of socks, which I was much more comfortable making, had more fun with the colors, and made a bit bigger to take shrinkage into consideration. (Ooh - "shrinkage" - evil word!) But after I made the new pair of socks so big, how would they compare to the original pair once they were washed and dried, shrunk and felted?


Check those out with the original picture. Not too bad, hunh? And once felted (which happens with the rubbing of the threads during the washing/drying process, causing them to fuzz together), the individual stitches aren't as obvious and the socks instead take on the appearance of a more cohesive fabric.


Sure, they still look a little oddly shaped, with the feet parts appearing really big compared to the calf parts, but once worn a few times (and trust me, I have!), the foot and leg parts get stretched and look a bit more "normal" in their proportions. Even though our weather has warmed up some, the nights are still chilly, and my feet are always cold, so I've been wearing these quite a bit. Brett's mom even wore my original pair when they were over on the weekend - her feet went from "too cold" to "nice and toasty warm!" quite quickly. In fact, after a few hours she had to take the socks off - she was getting TOO warm in them!


Anyhow, I have to say I'm really happy with how the second pair turned out and, um, uh oh - what's this?


Yeah, you might say I'm a glutton for punishment! This pair's for Brett however...he picked out the colors, the size of the bands of color, etc. This time I'm trying knit 3 purl 1 for the ribbed calf area, and am finding it seems less elastic (not too surprising, but I wanted to change up something in the technique for my next pair...the only way I'll learn!). Also, I'm making the calf part of this pair even longer....to really ensure they come up most of the calf after they shrink...

Hopefully I'll get them done for Brett before our weather gets too consistently warm!

3 comments:

Peter said...

Jeph, they look terrific, really. Nicely done!

FinnyKnits said...

Jeph! WOW! Those socks look amazing! Really, really nice! And, I should say, normal. I feel like knitted socks rarely look like "normal" socks. Bubba would like these, they're very manly.

Jeph said...

Peter - Thanks!!

Finny - Well then it sounds to me like you better get started on a new pair of socks! ;-)