And the SSP count is eight for eight!
Pattern: Snow Queen Socks, by Emmy Coplea
Yarn: Claudia Hand Painted Fingering, in Cabin Fever
Needles: 2.25 mm / US 1
I'm very pleased with the way most of these socks came out. The swirling pretty colours of the yarn worked out very well in the wide ribs. I'm not sure how I feel about the combination of yarn and lace, though - the lace seems to get lost in the yarn. Then again, looking at the sample that was done up in a semi-solid yarn, I couldn't really see the lace clearly there either. Also preventing me from being full-out thrilled with these socks is the fact that I sometimes perceive the lace as being really close to feather-and-fan, which I don't care for. At. All. (Sorry, feather-and-fan lovers. You will not find it here.)
Also, one skein turned out to have more purple to it. Ah, well, thus are the risks of working with handpainted yarns, no?
Admittedly, I only followed the pattern for the lace cuff, then noted that the rest of the sock was worked in those wide ribs, and sort of took it on my own from there. I worked the leg to a length that hits at a good spot on my leg, but with the width of the lace cuff, it looks sort of short. If I were to do this one again, I'd work fewer repeats of the lace - I did ten, and I think five might suit my short legs better.
I also purled the gussets in the round, worked a standard slipped-stitch heel flap over 31 sts, and continued with the wide ribs centered over the foot down to the toe, where I plunked in a row of purls on the instep before moving on to the toe. I figured that those wide ribs would look odd if they just stopped, and I didn't want them to continue into the toe, so I put in a horizontal line to end them. Be warned, though - if you do this with socks that have deeper ribs that draw in more, you may end up with a sock that looks rather phallic without a foot in it. These ones don't, but in my mind's eye, I can see it. If such a thing would offend you, keep that in mind. If such an effect would make you giggle and smile, also keep that in mind.
There's also a small repair on one sock. I was halfway down the foot, and about to set the sock aside for a moment, when I noticed an odd bump in the lace. Now, the unblocked lace is pretty bumpy anyway, but this bump looked different. Turns out, it was a dropped stitch - one of the double decreases somehow became an SSK, and the third stitch was just dropped. I suspect what happened is I borked the double decrease - pulled the new stitch off the needle during the passing over motion - but got distracted by something (phone ringing, doorbell, someone talking to me) and when I looked down again, I saw the two slipped stitches sitting there on my needle, and thought, Oh, SSK, and did that and continued on my merry way. So I never noticed my stitch counts were off, since they weren't, and everything was fine, till I found the bump of that poor live stitch. At that point, I wasn't about to rip out most of the sock to fix it properly, so I did a ghetto fix - I chained the dropped stitch back up to the should-have-been-a-double-decrease, then used a bit of yarn to fasten it to another stitch on the wrong side. Tie a good knot, weave in the ends a bit, done. From the front, no one's the wiser.
Errors and blurry lace notwithstanding, I'm still happy. These are a win for the sock drawer.
Next up? Boy, have I got a treat for me.
Pattern: Snow Queen Socks, by Emmy Coplea
Yarn: Claudia Hand Painted Fingering, in Cabin Fever
Needles: 2.25 mm / US 1
I'm very pleased with the way most of these socks came out. The swirling pretty colours of the yarn worked out very well in the wide ribs. I'm not sure how I feel about the combination of yarn and lace, though - the lace seems to get lost in the yarn. Then again, looking at the sample that was done up in a semi-solid yarn, I couldn't really see the lace clearly there either. Also preventing me from being full-out thrilled with these socks is the fact that I sometimes perceive the lace as being really close to feather-and-fan, which I don't care for. At. All. (Sorry, feather-and-fan lovers. You will not find it here.)
Also, one skein turned out to have more purple to it. Ah, well, thus are the risks of working with handpainted yarns, no?
Admittedly, I only followed the pattern for the lace cuff, then noted that the rest of the sock was worked in those wide ribs, and sort of took it on my own from there. I worked the leg to a length that hits at a good spot on my leg, but with the width of the lace cuff, it looks sort of short. If I were to do this one again, I'd work fewer repeats of the lace - I did ten, and I think five might suit my short legs better.
I also purled the gussets in the round, worked a standard slipped-stitch heel flap over 31 sts, and continued with the wide ribs centered over the foot down to the toe, where I plunked in a row of purls on the instep before moving on to the toe. I figured that those wide ribs would look odd if they just stopped, and I didn't want them to continue into the toe, so I put in a horizontal line to end them. Be warned, though - if you do this with socks that have deeper ribs that draw in more, you may end up with a sock that looks rather phallic without a foot in it. These ones don't, but in my mind's eye, I can see it. If such a thing would offend you, keep that in mind. If such an effect would make you giggle and smile, also keep that in mind.
There's also a small repair on one sock. I was halfway down the foot, and about to set the sock aside for a moment, when I noticed an odd bump in the lace. Now, the unblocked lace is pretty bumpy anyway, but this bump looked different. Turns out, it was a dropped stitch - one of the double decreases somehow became an SSK, and the third stitch was just dropped. I suspect what happened is I borked the double decrease - pulled the new stitch off the needle during the passing over motion - but got distracted by something (phone ringing, doorbell, someone talking to me) and when I looked down again, I saw the two slipped stitches sitting there on my needle, and thought, Oh, SSK, and did that and continued on my merry way. So I never noticed my stitch counts were off, since they weren't, and everything was fine, till I found the bump of that poor live stitch. At that point, I wasn't about to rip out most of the sock to fix it properly, so I did a ghetto fix - I chained the dropped stitch back up to the should-have-been-a-double-decrease, then used a bit of yarn to fasten it to another stitch on the wrong side. Tie a good knot, weave in the ends a bit, done. From the front, no one's the wiser.
Errors and blurry lace notwithstanding, I'm still happy. These are a win for the sock drawer.
Next up? Boy, have I got a treat for me.
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