Patience Makes a Rectangle Turn into a Sock

Regia Line Steps
Originally uploaded by sunasak

Lots of knitting was accomplished this weekend, thank goodness. One of my goals was to get the Pansy Posey sock #1 into good enough shape that it would stop looking like a misshapen rectangle and start looking like a sock. And I did it! Sunday morning I joined the top edges and made a leg, then I created a fine heel flap and turned heel. I am now almost finished with the gusset portion of the foot. I had a couple of challenges making the join between the sole and the instep ( I tried three different ways of picking up the edges of the instep before I found what is probably the “right” one). This means that the sock will not look 100% perfect. I think I’ll live. Mostly I was relieved to find that the leg part does fit over my leg (my gauge is just a fraction small, probably because the yarn is actually light fingering weight). I am looking forward to moving on down the leg. The joins are a bit challenging, so I can’t turn it into bus knitting, so it will have to be done at home. It’s OK, I will finish eventually. And at least it now LOOKS like a sock.

One of my readers commented to me (in person, whoa) that I sure seem to churn out the socks. To me, it seems like I am slow compared to other people, but then I keep reading blogs of people who knit every waking moment, which I can’t do. The bus is really, really helping, however.

Speaking of that, since I am in mid-foot on #2 of the current bus socks, I’ll be done by tomorrow at the rate I am going, so I need to choose the yarn for the next bus socks. As promised, I used a random number generator. It said: 77. A visit to my Ravelry stash page informed me that I had chosen a big blob of green yarn with little bursts of two or three other colors that make random stripes (see photo). I lost the ball band for this yarn, but luckily Ravelry made it easy to figure out that the yarn was Schachenmayr nomotta Regia Line Steps Color. Well, it will be a good one to use up! I had the same yarn in red, and I made it into a pattern with peaks and valleys that brought out the stripes. I may just whip these out quickly with a 3x1 rib similar to Thuja, keeping the ribbing going on the instep. The random number process is so far doing what I wanted: picking yarns that I might not have thought of on my own, but that I really do need to knit up. This was one of the first balls of sock yarn I bought, back when there weren’t any hand dyed options or anything! It will be good to have it see the light as socks.

It was a fun knitting weekend all around, since I had a great time at the LYS teaching a small class of a mother-in-law and daughter-in-law. It was supposed to be Knitting 1, but since they both knew how to knit (the MIL needed just a little help to remember, and the DIL needed just a little focus to learn decreasing and increasing so she can make more complex things), I let them make what they wanted. The DIL chose a simple lace pattern and we invented a scarf to make, using a nice brushed yarn. It should look pretty good! There were nice folks to chat with, too, so I did not mind one bit teaching an extra long class. I am so obviously not in this for the money! I’d been sorta sad that I have not met any knitters at work, but Katy (hi Katy) came along with news that she will be working near me starting in the fall, so that problem got solved, too. Plus, we had some good visitors, including the coworker who’s been out recovering from knee replacement surgery. It was great to see her. What a good day!

Today isn’t starting out too badly, either. I got a nice note on Ravelry from someone who finished a pair of my Glacier Lake socks, and it sure made me happy to see that something I designed got knitted up and is being worn. It actually looks really cute in the colors he chose, too. This reminds me that I ought to try to write up a recipe (not instructions) for the Wandering Melody socks. You can do the socks using any toe-up pattern you want, just adding the patterning to it, so I’d give more of a recipe than a complete pattern.