Ready?
Many people don't think of knitting as a summer activity. For some reason, 90 degree weather doesn't bring to mind cozy things made of wool. I'm not sure exactly why. This is the perfect time to keep knitting to stock up on things for the fall, which as you know, is just around the corner. (Apple picking starts the end of August, people!) Sock weather is a-comin'.
My last blog post was a teaser of my very first colorwork socks. Colorwork (aka stranded knitting, some of which is also called fair isle knitting) is when you knit with two (or more) yarn colors. I have always been a bit daunted by colorwork knitting because two yarns means you have to somehow hold and tension both of them. There are fancy little finger contraptions that you can strap on to a digit that will supposedly hold both yarns neatly, but not only am I wary of relying on a piece of plastic to do something, I believe most of them are designed for Continental knitters. Alas, I am an English thrower, not a Continental picker.
Quick explanation for those of you who are thinking "huh?":
Continental - holds yarn in left hand
English - hold yarn in right hand
Picker - uses the tip of the right needle to "pick" the strand of working yarn and pull the loop through
Thrower - moves hand (typically the right hand) to wrap, or throw, the yarn around the needle
Continental/picking knitting is generally faster and requires less hand/arm movement than English/throwing, but that's now how I learned. Plus I'm not sure how to purl Continental-style. I'll have to check it out on youtube.
Anyway, when you knit with two yarns, you can hold both in your right hand, both in the left, or one in each. See what I mean? Daunting. But the Sock Knitters Anonymous (SKA) group on Ravelry was doing colorwork for their July challenge, and since I was done with my BFF socks for the Knit Sock Love (KSL) knit-a-long, I gathered up my knitting courage and decided to give it a shot. And of course, I didn't pick a sock that has one little row or border of colorwork. I jumped in with both feet to knit Wendy Johnson's Norwegian Rose socks.
Here's the photo of the socks from her book:
Pretty, aren't they? I had purchased a dark brown yarn from Knit Picks a month or two ago in anticipation of someday knitting these socks. And as luck would have it, I had also recently acquired some Grant Creek Yarn in Spring Green. I love the color palette of the stock sock photo, so I was all set to copy it.
The toes were boring - just brown. I was nervous and anxious to start the colorwork portion - also knowing that these socks have a lot of colorwork! Even the soles have dots of green stitches all over them. Plus, not only is there the matter of manipulating both yarns, but many people have issues with their floats when making stranded socks. See, when you aren't using a yarn, it gets carried behind the yarn you are using until it's needed. That yarn going along the wrong side creates "floats." If there isn't enough slack in the floats, the socks will have no stretch and will be hard to get on. If there is really not enough slack, the floats can pull and bunch up the knitted fabric. But if the floats are too loose or too long, you can catch your toes in the loops when you try to put on the socks. So the goal is to have floats that are long enough to give a little negative ease on the socks but not so long that you're getting caught up in them.
Colorwork is sounding more and more fun, isn't it?
I read a tip of the SKA forums about knitting inside out to manage floats. By doing this, you can easily see how tight/loose they are, plus when you from needle to needle, you are forcing the floating yarn to take the long path around the outside of the sock (which is really the inside since it's inside out), rather than cutting the inside corners and being too short. Confused? I actually did a youtube search to find a video showing how to knit a colorwork sock inside out and didn't find anything, so I created my own. This will give you a better idea of what I mean:
And bonus! You got to see the progress of my socks! And, if you look at the video, you will also notice that I decided to knit holding one yarn in my left hand and one in my right. So the main color (dark brown), I knit using my right hand, throwing it as I usually do. The contrast color (green) is in my left hand, and I picked it Continental-style. I learned to pick! I'm a picker! It was a bit slow going at first, but then I got better at it. I did discover that my gauge is looser when I pick compared to when I throw, so the green stitches had a tendency to be looser than the brown. I had to be careful to keep the green stitches from being too loose.
A cool thing with colorwork patterns are that if you knit them well, the wrong side should look almost as nice as the right side, with all of the floats making a pretty reverse of the pattern. Here's the right-side photo you saw from my last blog post:
Now here is a picture of it turned inside-out (which is how it looks when I'm knitting it):
Pretty cool, huh? I have to admit, I think I'm just as proud of the wrong side as I am of the right side! :)
Because colorwork socks are all knit stitches (the different yarns create the pattern rather than having the stitches create one), they are pretty quick to knit once you get the holding-the-yarn thing down. I started these on July 26 and finished on August 8, and that's with a road trip to my mother-in-law's in New York for five days in between. I did work on them a little bit while we were there, but most of the time we were geocaching, at Niagra Falls, having a family barbeque, etc.
And here is the final product:
My Norwegian Rose Socks!
Yay! I'm so happy with how they turned out!!! Well, with one exception.
The heel from hell.
I've knit at least 30 pairs of socks, both cuff-down and toe-up, and this was the worst heel pattern of all of them. For those of you familiar with different heel types, it is a short row, wrap & turn heel. Let me start by saying that a wrap & turn heel is not my favorite heel to begin with. All of the picking up of the wraps and the double wraps is a pain, I often have trouble with the double wraps, and using a dark brown yarn makes them even harder to see. That being said, this particular heel had other issues which made me HATE it. I know that's a strong word and I don't often use it, but I HATE this heel.
Problem 1:
The heel pocket was too long and pointy. The pattern says to do your initial wrap & turns until there are 11 live stitches in the center (non-wrapped stitches). That's what I did. And it was too long, making the back bottom of the heel of the sock stick our farther than my actual heel. Annoying. If I knit this heel again, I'll stop at 13 or 15 live stitches, not 11.
Problem 2:
After the short row W&T heel, the pattern has you knit a mini heel flap for several rows, after which is states to start working in the round again. But that mini heel flap is a good half inch longer than the instep (top) of the sock, which means you start working in the round again, the sides of the heel flap aren't connected to anything and leave big gaping holes on both sides of the sock! I talked to another knitter on Ravelry who knit Wendy Johnson's Fair Isle socks which use the exact same heel, and she concurred that the heel construction was bad. However, she was smarter than I was and picked up a couple of gusset stitches on either side of that mini heel-flap so that she didn't have holes. I had questioned it but then decided to trust the pattern even though I knew better. I then had to stitch closed the gaping holes in my socks. Grrr.... If I knit this heel again, I will pick up 3 gusset stitches on either side of the heel flap and then decrease them back to the correct number of stitches on the following rows.
Other than those two things, I love these socks! (I just can't wear them with open-back shoes because of the pointy extra long heel issue.)
Being in a colorwork sort of mode, I then proceeded to ignore my Monkey socks (for the Cookie that Got Away KAL which need to be done by Sept 14) and my 2nd pair of BFF socks (for another entry into the KSL KAL which need to be finished by Aug 30). And I didn't immediately cast on for the KSL August KAL socks - Twisted Flower - even though I had the yarn caked and ready to go.
Instead I cast on another pair of colorwork socks - Butterflies Are Free. Here is the stock photo from the pattern page on Ravelry:
I couldn't resist. First, I had yarn in my stash to use! I had some Knit Picks bare merino/nylon fingering-weight yarn for the light color, plus a 93g hank of Holiday Yarn that I got from the fill-your-hand-for-$20 bin at the MA Sheep & Woolcraft Fair. Second, the cuff has a picot edge instead of the typically ribbed edge, and I wanted to try it. Third, as long as I cast them on by the end of July, I'd have until the end of August to finish them so they'd count as another entry for the SKA KAL. It was July 31st - I had until the end of the day! I figured I'd cast on the first cuff with the cute picot, post my pic, and set them aside until farther into the month. Little did I know that picot edge wasn't cute at all....
The pattern is one size and starts out "cast on 72 stitches with 2.5mm needles." 72? Most of the socks I've made are 64 stitches and ribbed, so they pull in. And 2.5mm is a size 1.5, where my socks have all previous been knit with size 0 or 1's. But hey, I follow directions. I cast one, knit a few rows, switch to the bare yarn, do the picot edge, fold it over, and yes, it's adorable! And freakin' huge! Instead of 8 sts/inch, I was getting 5-6. I had a good 3" or more of extra cuff.
So I frogged it. (Rip it! Rip it!) Started over with size 1 needles.
Knit some rows, picot picot picot, knit more, fold it over. Super cute! And huge!!!
So I frogged it. Again. Grabbed my size 0 needles.
Knit, picot, knit, fold. Cute. Huge. Are you freaking kidding me??? It's now been two and a half hours of knitting what should have taken me 30 minutes.
Frogged for the third time. Emailed the pattern designer saying WTF??? (Okay, I didn't actually say that, and even the acronym makes me feel a little dirty since I really don't swear much and especially not the F word! But I did email her.)
She wrote back saying many people with smaller calves will use 64 sts for the picot cuff, then do 1 row to increase back to 72 before starting the pattern. So I went back to my size 1 needles and cast on for the fourth time - 64 stitches this time. Knit, picot, knit, fold, knit the edges together to finish the cuff, increase back to 72, and two rows starting the colorwork.
Ta-da!
Guess what. It's still a little big. So we'll see if A) these get finished, a B) if they fit or if I'll have to find someone worthy to gift them to. (I know that's not proper English, ending with a preposition, but "to whom I can gift them" sounds so stuffy.)
And.... that's as far as I've gotten on those socks.
I did knit some of my 2nd BFF socks in the car on the way home from NY this past Sunday. But I don't have a picture of their progress so you have to wait for a future blog entry. (Tease alert! Tease alert!)
But I did also cast on Twisted Flower. These are going to be double-dipped in the Solid Socks KAL since their theme color for August is water. Blue is good for water socks, so there you go.
I now have four socks in progress. Here's the list along with their approximate levels of completion and their due dates to qualify for the appropriate KALs:
2nd BFF - 30% done - due Aug 31
Butterfly colorwork - 5% done - due Aug 31
Tree Fort Monkeys - 5% done - due Sept 14
Twisted Flower - 10% done - due Sept 30
And lets not forget that as of September 1st, I'm going to cast on "In and Out" socks for KSL and a pair of red socks (probably "Marlene" by Cookie A. for Solid Socks.)
Me thinks I'd better get knitting!
Glad I had my coffee ready when I sat down! I feel so slow, but will be with you on the red KAL for Sept!! I am so excited to actually do a KAL that I think I can actually finish and with my buddies!
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