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Round 1 - Ebil Choices
Mar. 27th, 2021 06:01 pmAlmost as soon as the qualifying round ended, the team names were announced and despite some problems with finding the team I was placed in (the earburn I was supposed to get, didn't work) Kat helped me out there. The teams are named after stars from constellations, and I was placed in Veritate (a star in Andromeda).
And as quickly as we were placed in teams, the specs were announced and the pattern dropped soon after. It was time to go!
This year we're taking pics of socks on cat butts. Doortje didn't mind much.
The sock isn't hard, it's a nearly vanilla knit with a few light cables. The trick to this sock is that the cables are about the only thing that are knit, the rest of the sock consists of purled stitches. And because the Sock Madness has a lot of people who whinge about these things, there was an alternative.
Either you purl the socks, just like the pattern suggests.
Or you can knit the socks inside out.
There were charts for both options, and I chose to take the easier route: purl please!
The charts were huge, and luckily there was an option to get a larger chart, so you could print it on 2 sheets of A4 paper, cut off part of the side, and tape it together to get an almost A3-sized chart. It was still slow going, and the little ruler I used to keep track of the row I was knitting, kept sliding about.
On the suggestion of someone from my team, I decided to dive into KnitCompanion. It's an app for tablet or phone that helps you place both a horizontal and vertical ruler on your chart, for easier tracking. I was curious how easy this would be in Knit Companion. One problem: I don't have a tablet and there is no way I want to do this on my phone.
Lanserschrek helped me out: he suggested an Android emulator, so I could install KnitCompanion on my PC. It was a little headache to get it to load the PDF, but once that was working I was amazed at how easy these humongous charts suddenly were. I zipped through the second half of the leg and am now ready to start on the heel flap!
And with the installation of Knit Companion, suddenly by resistance to the pattern was diminished to it not bothering me much anymore. They're still not socks I will wear myself, and I hope they will find a nice recipient. But at least it's busting a bit of the stash. I may actually start to enjoy this round now.
And as quickly as we were placed in teams, the specs were announced and the pattern dropped soon after. It was time to go!
This year we're taking pics of socks on cat butts. Doortje didn't mind much.
The sock isn't hard, it's a nearly vanilla knit with a few light cables. The trick to this sock is that the cables are about the only thing that are knit, the rest of the sock consists of purled stitches. And because the Sock Madness has a lot of people who whinge about these things, there was an alternative.
Either you purl the socks, just like the pattern suggests.
Or you can knit the socks inside out.
There were charts for both options, and I chose to take the easier route: purl please!
The charts were huge, and luckily there was an option to get a larger chart, so you could print it on 2 sheets of A4 paper, cut off part of the side, and tape it together to get an almost A3-sized chart. It was still slow going, and the little ruler I used to keep track of the row I was knitting, kept sliding about.
On the suggestion of someone from my team, I decided to dive into KnitCompanion. It's an app for tablet or phone that helps you place both a horizontal and vertical ruler on your chart, for easier tracking. I was curious how easy this would be in Knit Companion. One problem: I don't have a tablet and there is no way I want to do this on my phone.
Lanserschrek helped me out: he suggested an Android emulator, so I could install KnitCompanion on my PC. It was a little headache to get it to load the PDF, but once that was working I was amazed at how easy these humongous charts suddenly were. I zipped through the second half of the leg and am now ready to start on the heel flap!
And with the installation of Knit Companion, suddenly by resistance to the pattern was diminished to it not bothering me much anymore. They're still not socks I will wear myself, and I hope they will find a nice recipient. But at least it's busting a bit of the stash. I may actually start to enjoy this round now.
