My Muse did an "Oooh, shiny!"
Feb. 16th, 2017 10:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
janestarzOn March 1st, Sock Madness will be starting and on Valentine's day the warm-up sock came out. Sock Madness is a knitting competition, where teams strive to be the first ones to finish a pair of socks in a set time. People who don't make the deadline are dropped off the team, but still receive the patterns to knit at their own pace. The final round (somewhere this summer) has the fastest people from each team competing against eachother. First one to finish wins eternal fame and glory. Usually, the Scandinavians rock this contest; last year's winner took 17 hours to complete a pair of socks (I am currently avarageing around 2 weeks per pair). The sock patterns are set in advance, and can include cables, different heels, stranded colourwork or double-knit cuffs -- so they're not plain vanilla socks either!
The warm-up pattern is a pattern to get you in the mood for knitting socks, to start getting used to the tiny needles needed for sock gauge. I was happily knitting away on the cowl of my new Bodemloos sweater when my Muse got wind of the pattern and then nothing would please her more than to start on the warm-up sock.
So I grudgingly trudged out the boxes of Sock yarn, browsed my Ravelry stash page (not quite up to date, but close enough), and sighed "I've got no yarn that will work!!"
Apparantly, next to being a star in comedy and tragedy, my Muse is a little bit of a drama queen as well.
I rifled through the skeins, looked at the stash page and suddenly inspiration struck. I checked the yardages again -- could it really be 50 grams of the main colour will be enough? -- and cast on that very same night.
It's a happy pattern with stranded colourwork and knit-purl relief. I picked white as the main colour (the remains of a swap yarn after knitting socks for Yava'in) and a rest of Opal that was gifted to me by my mother for the contrast colour. As soon as the ribbed cuff was done, I was kicking myself for not picking light grey as the main colour, to get a less romantic and less sweet-tooth look.
I haven't done a lot of colourwork either, and both attempts at Fair Isle (as the technique is also called) were for hats, which need considerable less stretch than socks do. The pattern took a lot of time explaining the best ways to do this technique, making Sock Madness very low-threshold. Even if you've no experience, they'll guide you through it. All you need to do is be able to understand what you're reading (which is still quite a feat!). The pattern for the colourwork is fairly simple as well, although I do sometimes lose count and I had an unwilling row counter.
I also hope I've got enough yarn for this, as Yava'in's socks needed a little over 50 grams, and she wears several sizes smaller than I do. (Also: the colourwork in her socks was longer)
This sock is just a warming-up sock, so I don't have to follow the pattern exactly. As I'm typing this I realise I can easily cheat by knitting the heel and toe in another colour, I might not have enough pink, but maybe another colour...
After knitting helter-skelter for two days (after work) my fingers are quite sore and my muse is becoming bored again. Now that she's tried this new technique and she's figured out how to do stranded colourwork, she's lost interest and I'm stuck with half a sock. Great.
But seeing as I can use a little break before the real competition starts, I'll work on the cowl tonight. It'll be a relief to handle needles twice as big in diameter again.
The warm-up pattern is a pattern to get you in the mood for knitting socks, to start getting used to the tiny needles needed for sock gauge. I was happily knitting away on the cowl of my new Bodemloos sweater when my Muse got wind of the pattern and then nothing would please her more than to start on the warm-up sock.
So I grudgingly trudged out the boxes of Sock yarn, browsed my Ravelry stash page (not quite up to date, but close enough), and sighed "I've got no yarn that will work!!"
Apparantly, next to being a star in comedy and tragedy, my Muse is a little bit of a drama queen as well.
I rifled through the skeins, looked at the stash page and suddenly inspiration struck. I checked the yardages again -- could it really be 50 grams of the main colour will be enough? -- and cast on that very same night.
It's a happy pattern with stranded colourwork and knit-purl relief. I picked white as the main colour (the remains of a swap yarn after knitting socks for Yava'in) and a rest of Opal that was gifted to me by my mother for the contrast colour. As soon as the ribbed cuff was done, I was kicking myself for not picking light grey as the main colour, to get a less romantic and less sweet-tooth look.
I haven't done a lot of colourwork either, and both attempts at Fair Isle (as the technique is also called) were for hats, which need considerable less stretch than socks do. The pattern took a lot of time explaining the best ways to do this technique, making Sock Madness very low-threshold. Even if you've no experience, they'll guide you through it. All you need to do is be able to understand what you're reading (which is still quite a feat!). The pattern for the colourwork is fairly simple as well, although I do sometimes lose count and I had an unwilling row counter.
I also hope I've got enough yarn for this, as Yava'in's socks needed a little over 50 grams, and she wears several sizes smaller than I do. (Also: the colourwork in her socks was longer)
This sock is just a warming-up sock, so I don't have to follow the pattern exactly. As I'm typing this I realise I can easily cheat by knitting the heel and toe in another colour, I might not have enough pink, but maybe another colour...
After knitting helter-skelter for two days (after work) my fingers are quite sore and my muse is becoming bored again. Now that she's tried this new technique and she's figured out how to do stranded colourwork, she's lost interest and I'm stuck with half a sock. Great.
But seeing as I can use a little break before the real competition starts, I'll work on the cowl tonight. It'll be a relief to handle needles twice as big in diameter again.
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Date: 2017-02-16 09:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-02-16 08:29 pm (UTC)