Project fails

So, socks.  It has been established I enjoy knitting them, and those around me enjoy receiving them.  My mother usually gets one for her birthday and Mother's Day - I say one, because generally I have one sock finished and the other 3/4 done when the holiday rolls around, so I show her what she'll be getting in just another few days.  No matter how much time I leave to finish the project, it never happens.  Anyway, sticking with tradition, mom got one sock on Sunday:

....and it didn't fit.  The pattern is called Sand Dunes, by Phyll Lagerman, and it is really beautiful.  It calls for Madeline Tosh sock yarn and a size 1 needle.  I had this Regia Jet Set color that I thought would be a great substitution for the recommended yarn, and I am using size 1 1/2 needles.  My mother cannot get the sock over her foot.  It's my own fault - I don't test knit a swatch (although in this case, I don't know that it would have helped) to check size & gauge, but I almost never have a problem.  The silver lining, however, is that the socks are now up for grabs for anyone who they fit.  I will be like Prince Charming, only with socks.

In other project fails, I had nearly finished the winter cardigan I started in November:

The yarn is Alpine Lake by Tucker's Woods, a dyer out of Connecticut who is discontinuing production of these yarns.  Which is a total shame; I totally adore this yarn.  Anyway, this is a shot of the back, the only thing I currently have done.  Why, you ask?  Well, when cast on for the first front piece, the number of stitches for size large (46) seemed too small to me, so I cast on a few more (70.)  I finished the piece, then noticed I had changed the size of the cables, making them larger.  Knitting friends assured me no one would notice, so I made the left side to match.  I got a little nervous, because there was not a lot of yarn left over to make the sleeves, and it's not possible for me to get more since the dyer is no longer creating new product.  And there's no guarantee of color matching anyway.  But I decided to risk it. 

To start the sleeves, I needed to sew the shoulder seams together, which is when I discovered that if you increase the front, but you have not correspondingly increased the back, when you sew the seam, the cardigan front will come more than halfway across, creating a sweater that is unwearable.  So I ripped back both front pieces into nothingness, and cast on for the right front again.  The silver lining in this project is that I have now made the cables to match the back, so I won't be thinking about that mistake when I am wearing the sweater.  If I ever actually finish the sweater.

I think my next project will be a stockinette scarf.  Pretty hard to mess that up.

Unexpected outcomes

So, I started weaving a blanket for my living room.  For several years now I have been saying that I was going to knit a blanket for the couch - because my couch is so long, (120"), I had extended the pattern I found to be the same length as the couch.  So far I've gotten one segment (out of three) of the basketweave pattern done, and none of the two cable pattern segments, never mind stitching all five panels together.  So I decided to use the yarn to weave a throw for the couch:

I was using the same color for the warp and the weft, but I really should have used a bigger dpi for this project, because the yarn is sticky & tends to attach back upon itself, making the weaving complicated and separating out the two levels of warps difficult.  It started out going slower than previous weaving projects, but far faster than the planned knit version of the blanket. 

And then......disaster struck.  Somehow when I was warping the loom some of the skeins slid down to the sides, reducing the tension.  By the time I got about 20" woven - which took forever - the warp was all off, tensions were different and the blanket was looking like a big mess.  Sometimes when a project is not fun I have to keep going, but since this was for me, well, I cut my losses.  Literally.  I cut it off the loom, saved the warp threads for another project, and tossed the piece I had been working on, which resembled a very small area rug. 

Last Wednesday I warped a modified version of the throw I had planned to make for my mother, similar to the "neck warmer" (her words) I gave her for Christmas:

Windsor Button in Boston is going out of business, so I had done some hunting in the store to find compatable colors of yarn to make the throw.  Because these are not a large-volume discounted Pound of Yarn, I knew this sucker was going to be expensive so any opportunity to purchase the supplies for less was welcomed.  So I asked mom if she still wanted the throw, and she said.......no.  And promptly went off on a two-week vacation, out of cell phone range.  Ok then, looks like I'm making myself a shawl!  Or a table runner.  Or maybe I'll use it as both - if I get cold I'll just yank it off the table in the middle of dinner, like a chilly, demented magician.  That might give my husband pause.  I should have it finished by this weekend, which will be a good morale booster after the last weaving failure.

Done!

I was so excited to finish these socks.  When I cast them off the needles, I heard this in my head, I was so happy to be finished:

The pattern is totally amazing, but each sock took eons and for the first time in my life, I developed Second Sock Syndrome.  Possibly because I had to restart the first sock three times, and then on the second I had to rip back 25 rows to the heel, due to a mistake I made in the gusset.  After all my years of knitting, this was the first time I had ever tried to follow a chart.  I need more practice, clearly.

I persevered, though, and they're ready to go:

It's a shame that it's now over 90 degrees with 70% humidity in New England.  I have them sitting on a chair in my bedroom rather than in a drawer so I can admire them daily.  My husband leaves his store-bought socks out on top of his dresser all the time, so what's one pair on the chair?  I like them even more now that they've been cast off the needles.  And now, onto the next  project!

Third Time IS the Charm!

I am pleased to say that I appear to be smarter than a sock knitting chart - I have finished one sock of the Vorticity pattern from Alice Yu's Socktopus - but not without significant help from the internet.  That chart VEXED me, until I found the Ravelry group and the errata page done by Ms. Yu herself.  I noticed that I pop up pretty high in the results when you do a Google search about the Vorticity pattern and problems, so for those of you who are just here to gawk at what I'm making, you can skip ahead to the pretty photos at the bottom.  For those of you in a vexed state about your own version of the Vorticity sock, read on.

First off, read the chart left to right, starting at the bottom right corner and working left, then up.  In the book, the leg chart (p. 88 in the U.S. version) is properly numbered - there are 21 rows, and the numbers are right next to the appropriate row (they are not for the instep chart, but more on that in a minute.)  The stitches for the rows repeat until you get to the last 10 or so stitches.  At row 11, you knit three, then knit 2 together, and that is the end of that row.  Place a stitch marker, mark your paper (or whatever you do to keep track of where you are in the pattern), and immediately start row 12.  (This is where I went wrong the first two times I started.)  Row 12 is knit normally, and the last stitches of that row are the ones that were the four stitches that made up all of row 11.  Continue on with the chart.  When you get to row 19, you don't knit the last 4 stitches.  Those 4 stitches become the start of row 20.  The shifting stitches help contribute to that lovely rippled pattern.

The heel, heel turn and gusset were all pretty straightforward.  As I was knitting, I was thinking, "Hmm, I wonder if this pattern will feel strange on the bottom of the foot of the sock?"  Turns out, you don't do the pattern on the bottom of the sock.  After you knit the heel, and as you start the gusset, you use a stitch marker to establish the instep portion of the sock, and that's the only part that gets the pattern - the rest of the stitches are straight knitting, leaving a smooth sole on the sock.

When using the instep chart, you'll notice that there are 21 rows, which is not accurate - there are only 20.  Alice Yu explained on Ravelry that the printer's typesetting caused the numbering to be off from the actual rows.  I re-numbered the rows, starting at row 3 (where they start to go off-center of the row) so that my pattern chart has the correct number of 20 rows.  (I put my knitting down and pick it up often and tend to knit in the morning on the train, before my second cup of coffee.  I need every crutch and clear set of directions I can get my hands on.)  Knit the instep pattern for only the stitches found on the instep needle, and then straight knit the remainder of the row.  The instep chart doesn't have the same stitch-shift that the leg chart does, so I found it a little easier, and it was smooth sailing right through the toe decreases and binding off (I used the Kitchner stitch to close the toe.)

I cannot wait to wear these socks.  Too bad it's summer, and I'll have to wait a few more weeks.