Um. The past few days have not gone the way I wanted them to. Hey, look! Completed socks!
Pattern: Wye, by Hypercycloid Designs
Yarn: Invictus Adventure, in More Power
Needles: 2.25 mm / US 1
Rank: #64
So I kind of forgot to do that thing I like to do where I take a picture each morning to document the previous day's progress. Whoops. I mean, I did it on Monday, and I even took the picture Tuesday morning, but never got around to editing and posting it, and then Wednesday and today I just felt like I didn't have time. See, my goal with this Tour is that I'd like to earn more than the bare minimum number of points at each stage. To do that, I have to do better than a 61st place finish.
I didn't make it this round.
So my feelings about these socks are sort of ambivalent right now, because I'm disappointed in myself. I wasn't able to squeeze enough knitting time out of the past few days to do what I wanted to do, and I'm frankly upset with myself for not doing better. I hate not meeting the goals I set for myself, particularly when they're pretty reasonable - after all, I didn't set out to win the Tour (that would require some reorganizing of my days and shifting of priorities that might make others question whether my participation in the Tour is wise in the future).
But. There's nothing to do but move forward.
When I can set aside my feelings about my performance on this leg of the Tour, I'm very pleased with these socks. Red is a ridiculously tricky colour to photograph well, particularly with an old iPhone 4. (Why yes, I am jonesing for a new phone - how could you tell?) Reds seem to sort of blow out other details, so in these pictures, you can only sort of see the cable work, which makes it look like I made a bad yarn-pattern pairing choice. In real life, the cables stand out pretty well, I think. The pattern was extremely clearly written, and easy to follow, unless you do what I did, which is put it down and pick it up a bit too frequently, so I lost my spot in the charts a couple of times, resulting in some tinking or dropping down to fix cables or lack of cables. (Of course, a simple solution would be to mark your spot in the chart in some way. I didn't print the pattern, though, just viewed it on my tablet, so no super easy way to mark.)
About the fit - these fit, but the fit is a bit close in one spot, near the top of the leg. The way the cabling and biasing of the fabric go, they end up sort of creating a pinch point there. I can get the socks on and off, but it's a bit of a careful go. The designer notes that if a person normally wears a 64 stitch sock, then they should knit the 72 stitch (medium) size. I frequently knit 64 stitch socks - in plain stockinette, they're a bit baggy, but with other stitch patterns it works out pretty well. If the fabric is particularly unstretchy - lots of cables, or 3-to-1 decreases - then I like to go up a little more still. The largest I've ever gone was 72 stitches, for the Chicane socks from last year's Tour. Those ended up being a teeny bit big on me. I wear them, no problem, but they just feel a little roomier than they need to be.
So this pattern has you start with one stitch count, chug away through the foot, and then your stitch count increases to accommodate the increased cabling of the leg motif. The medium promised to go up to 82 stitches. I saw that and freaked out a bit. That seemed like an insanely huge number of stitches, and I was sure that I'd end up with something that wouldn't fit well. So I knit the small. I reasoned with myself that only incredibly unstretchy socks won't fit at 64 stitches, and these shouldn't be that unstretchy through the 64 stitch part, and when stretch does start to decline, I'd have extra stitches to compensate.
And it is fine, except for that one spot. Like I said, I can get them on and off, but it takes a bit of work - more so getting them off than putting them on.
So while I'm not impressed with myself in the Tour? The socks are a good thing.
Pattern: Wye, by Hypercycloid Designs
Yarn: Invictus Adventure, in More Power
Needles: 2.25 mm / US 1
Rank: #64
So I kind of forgot to do that thing I like to do where I take a picture each morning to document the previous day's progress. Whoops. I mean, I did it on Monday, and I even took the picture Tuesday morning, but never got around to editing and posting it, and then Wednesday and today I just felt like I didn't have time. See, my goal with this Tour is that I'd like to earn more than the bare minimum number of points at each stage. To do that, I have to do better than a 61st place finish.
I didn't make it this round.
So my feelings about these socks are sort of ambivalent right now, because I'm disappointed in myself. I wasn't able to squeeze enough knitting time out of the past few days to do what I wanted to do, and I'm frankly upset with myself for not doing better. I hate not meeting the goals I set for myself, particularly when they're pretty reasonable - after all, I didn't set out to win the Tour (that would require some reorganizing of my days and shifting of priorities that might make others question whether my participation in the Tour is wise in the future).
But. There's nothing to do but move forward.
When I can set aside my feelings about my performance on this leg of the Tour, I'm very pleased with these socks. Red is a ridiculously tricky colour to photograph well, particularly with an old iPhone 4. (Why yes, I am jonesing for a new phone - how could you tell?) Reds seem to sort of blow out other details, so in these pictures, you can only sort of see the cable work, which makes it look like I made a bad yarn-pattern pairing choice. In real life, the cables stand out pretty well, I think. The pattern was extremely clearly written, and easy to follow, unless you do what I did, which is put it down and pick it up a bit too frequently, so I lost my spot in the charts a couple of times, resulting in some tinking or dropping down to fix cables or lack of cables. (Of course, a simple solution would be to mark your spot in the chart in some way. I didn't print the pattern, though, just viewed it on my tablet, so no super easy way to mark.)
About the fit - these fit, but the fit is a bit close in one spot, near the top of the leg. The way the cabling and biasing of the fabric go, they end up sort of creating a pinch point there. I can get the socks on and off, but it's a bit of a careful go. The designer notes that if a person normally wears a 64 stitch sock, then they should knit the 72 stitch (medium) size. I frequently knit 64 stitch socks - in plain stockinette, they're a bit baggy, but with other stitch patterns it works out pretty well. If the fabric is particularly unstretchy - lots of cables, or 3-to-1 decreases - then I like to go up a little more still. The largest I've ever gone was 72 stitches, for the Chicane socks from last year's Tour. Those ended up being a teeny bit big on me. I wear them, no problem, but they just feel a little roomier than they need to be.
So this pattern has you start with one stitch count, chug away through the foot, and then your stitch count increases to accommodate the increased cabling of the leg motif. The medium promised to go up to 82 stitches. I saw that and freaked out a bit. That seemed like an insanely huge number of stitches, and I was sure that I'd end up with something that wouldn't fit well. So I knit the small. I reasoned with myself that only incredibly unstretchy socks won't fit at 64 stitches, and these shouldn't be that unstretchy through the 64 stitch part, and when stretch does start to decline, I'd have extra stitches to compensate.
And it is fine, except for that one spot. Like I said, I can get them on and off, but it takes a bit of work - more so getting them off than putting them on.
So while I'm not impressed with myself in the Tour? The socks are a good thing.
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