AuburnChick's Adventures

Here is a picture of my latest finished project:

I’m calling them my Pippi Longstocking Socks because they remind me of the old, old, old show’s main character.  She always wore the craziest socks.

The pattern is actually called Stornoway Socks.  The free pattern can be found here.

My friend, Rabbitrescuer, wanted to learn how to knit socks, so I offered to do a Knit-a-Long with her.  I let her pick out the pattern.  She picked a GREAT one too!

This pattern is written for Magic Loop.  It has a short-row heel.  You probably remember my victory over that battle in this post.

The yarn is Fiesta Baby Boom.  The colorway is Tutti Frutti.  The yarn is fabulous!  It’s soft and moved easily through my hands.  I used 100 grams (3.6 oz.).  The skeins have 2 oz each, so it was roughly 1.75 skeins of yarn.  Thank goodness I had bought two!

One of the main reasons why my friend selected this pattern was because it was written for worsted weight yarn.  This threw me for a loop because the yarn’s gauge is 6 1/2 stitches per inch with size 4 needle.  Let me tell you…my gauge was wayyyyy off for the pattern.  I really hate gauge.

Ugh.  I hate messing with numbers.  My brain struggled mightily with this dilemma.  I finally decided to use larger needles and make the smaller size sock.  Winging it.  Brave, eh?

One of my favorite things about this pattern is the cable that runs up one side of each sock.  Yes, there’s a left and right sock.  So, you have a different cable for each one.

Here’s where I learned a big lesson:  Never think you’re bigger than your britches.  I figured I’m so good that I could do the cable without a cable needle…and so I proceeded to work sock #1.  When I got to sock #2, I paused with the different cable, actually thinking my way through it.  And I made an interesting discovery…my cable on the first sock was backwards.  It was supposed to be running to the outside of the leg.  There was no way I was going to frog it, so I did the reverse cable on the other leg.  It’s not like it was an intricate pattern, and non-knitters would never notice.  Actually, I don’t think most knitters would either.

My pattern modifications (other than the unintended cable switch) were to knit the socks almost to my knees, thus adding five more pattern repeats that involved increases on the back of the leg, and adding 10 rounds of 2×2 ribbing for the cuff.  The pattern is easy to memorize, so it literally flew off my needles.  Had I not had to do the napkin rings for the church retreat, I could easily have had these done in two weeks (factoring in my work schedule, of course).  I had so much yarn that I figured it would be a shame end the socks calf-high.  Oh, and I worked the double rib invisible bind-off, my favorite, from the Fall 2008 Interweave Knits issue.  I’ve mentioned it before.

My only complaint is with the way the colors changed near the top.  I think it’s because of the increases I had to do for the calf (written into the pattern).  Perhaps adding more stitches threw off the color pattern and led to a looser and thus darker appearance?  Who knows.  You can tell, from looking at the heel in one of the photos, how much darker the stripes are there as well.

Whatever.

I love the socks.  I feel young and carefree when I’m wearing them.  They are extra warm, and they are the best fitting pair of socks I have ever made.

Filed under: Knitting | Tagged: cables, fiesta baby boom, Knitting, socks, stornoway socks | 2 Comments »