Inconsistency, thy name is sock yarn

Self-patterning socks for moi

Yesterday I was zooming happily up the leg of sock #1, and came to a knot where there had been a cut in the skein. Okay, I thought, no problem, that's annoying but I can live with it. At this stage in the game, it won't make a huge difference in my efforts to make the two socks identical.

Or so I thought.

Half an inch later as I came to the next colour change, I realised that the yarn after the join was variegating in the wrong direction.

I was pretty furious with the yarn company. That kind of mistake kind of negates the purpose and value of their product, doncha think? I had to frog back half an inch to the join and start again, this time from the outside of the skein. Plus, I first had to cut off a whole huge section from the beginning of the outside of the skein in order to continue the colour pattern properly on the sock. It was extremely annoying, and as a result I may not have enough yarn left over to do socks for my daughter, as I was originally hoping. It kind of blows.

On the bright side, I'm less than a row away from starting the top ribbing of the leg on sock #1:

Self-patterning socks for DH

Well, I finally took that deep fortifying breath I needed and undid the castoff of sock #1. I redid it using a larger needle, which resulted (duh) in a top edge that does not cut off the circulation in my calf. They should fit DH just fine. I almost didn't complete the castoff with the amount of yarn I had, though - in fact, I had to K2tog with the last stitch (hopefully that makes sense to you) in order to have enough yarn to weave in at the back of the sock to stop the castoff from unravelling. But no matter, it's done. Hooray.

I then started work on sock #2. To my delight, the second skein not only variegated in the same order as the first skein when I started pulling from the centre, but it also started at almost the exact same point in the colourway. I was very impressed - which contrasted rather markedly with the disgust I felt with my other self-patterning yarn of the same brand. Go figure. I did have to play a little fast-and-loose about an inch into the toe to get the stripes to start going in precisely the same spots as with sock #1 (yes, I'm just that anal), but you can hardly tell:


So far I'm very pleased.

Lotus Blossom Shawl for moi

Okay, I lied. Turns out I did end up finishing it this weekend. :) The castoff was a bit fiddly (thanks to the bobbles) and took me a little over two hours, but it wasn't too bad at all. The shawl is now blocking.


pre-blocking (crap)


blocking (so not crap)

Since I'm just waiting for the sucker to dry, I am calling it - it's officially done. I have finally made something for me. Me, me, me. Me me. Me. La la la...

(A pause while Kathleen does a little dance.)

Ahem.

Pictures of the final product on a non-electric green background will be posted once the shawl has dried.