K'done: Rivercat Socks

Hey look! Another pair of socks!



Pattern: Rivercat Sock, by Brenda Patipa
Yarn: Knit Picks Stroll Kettle Dyed Sock, in Oak
Needles: 2.25 mm / US 1

These were actually finished on May 31 - grafted the toes shut as I waited for my thesis to be printed for initial submission.

That's right! My thesis has officially gone out for examination! I finished it! All I have left to do is defend the sucker and do the final revisions - assuming I pass - and then I will have my PhD!

I couriered the thesis copies on the morning of 1 June, and the days since then have been wild. I keep swinging from being so thrilled I want to dance in public and tell complete strangers of my accomplishment, to being so nervous and wrecked about it that I just want to lie down in a busy roadway. On the one hand, it's done, but on the other, now it's being examined. I haven't touched a lick of work since then, which will have to change pretty soon, but I've enjoyed my week so far, and I'm slowly settling down on just being thrilled.

But back to the socks. These socks were started once the official May SSP socks were wrapped up mid-month, and in the back of my mind, they were always the making-up-for-April socks. So I'm all caught up, SSP-wise.

The pattern was fun - fairly easy to memorize, though the ribbing setup at the cuff I did not memorize - I printed off the chart and carted it around with me, and consulted it faithfully for the ribbing portion. Once I got the hang of the rest of the pattern, I just went with it. I subbed in an eye of partridge heel flap and purled gussets in the round, to avoid picking up stitches. I also knit the 66 st version, since I know 60 sts on these needles is a bit of a tight fit.

One thing I'm not so sure about is the way the purled triangles sort of bulge out. Maybe that will have disappeared now that I've washed them.



The yarn was not the colour I had stored in my brain - a much richer, warmer brown than what I was remembering, I was quite happy to correct myself on that one. There was, however, a weird change in the colouring on one of the socks - even though both were knit top down from one skein, if you look closely, it looks like I was knitting toe up, and then ran out of yarn on the second sock, and grabbed a close-enough substitute to finish up the last pattern repeat and the ribbing on the leg. I noticed this when I got to the heel - that was when there was enough of both shades of fabric for me to notice the difference - and couldn't bring myself to tear the whole thing out to get rid of the slightly darker section of yarn, so it is as it is. Probably no one will ever see it, since the legs of socks are typically hidden by legs of pants, and I'm not in the habit of hiking up my pants on a regular basis to show the entirety of my socks off to everyone - the foot is usually good enough.

In fact, I didn't even photograph the colour blemish for the blog. Nyah nyah.

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