Yarn Chicken And Readers

Howdy, friends! I’m back to share some adventures in sock knitting. Last month, I cast on a pair of sock for myself. I finished them earlier this week, and they are wonderful. Check them out:

They turned out wonderfully, and I definitely had an adventure getting them finished. Of late, I have been knitting my socks with contrasting yarn for toes, heels, and cuffs. With my size 13 feet and love of long legs in my socks, doing contrasting bits is a great way to extend my main yarn. With this yarn, I didn’t have a great contrast yarn handy and I decided to knit the socks with the same yarn throughout.

I knit these socks top-down, so I didn’t have a great way to know when to turn the heel so that I’d use half the yarn. So I just eyeballed it. Of course, once I completed the heel, there was no flexibility for the rest of the sock — I needed to knit it to fit the length of my foot. This is one of the dangers of knitting socks top-down: you can’t adjust the length as you go to match how much yarn you’re using. When I was done with the first sock, I weighed it.

It clocked in right at 50 grams! The hank was advertised as a 100g hank, so I knew I was in dangerous territory for my second sock. Would I have enough yarn to knit it? I figured I probably would, and if I didn’t, I could just knit the second toe a different color and have an amusing story to tell. It was certainly odd knowing that I was playing yarn chicken as soon as I started the second sock. As it turned out, I finished the sock with about 2g to spare. (Dyers usually err on the side of giving you more yarn than advertised, rather than less.) I considered it a perfectly efficient maximization of the yarn for the socks. I couldn’t be more pleased.

The adventures didn’t stop there! When I was all done with the socks and ready to Kitchener the toes shut and weave in the ends, I found myself sitting in my comfortable chair without my readers.

Did I mention my chair was comfortable?

Sure, I could have gotten up and retrieved my readers. But, no. I figured I’d take my chances and go forward the best I could. I did OK.

You can see that I didn’t manage to keep all the yarn tail on the inside of the sock. Sure, I could have gone back and re-done the stitching. But, quite frankly, I am OK with how they turned out. No one’s going to see it — whenever I’m wearing the socks, I’ll also be wearing shoes. So it’s just fine.

I have since put a pair of readers on the table next to my comfortable chair.

I ended up finishing these socks in a little longer than a month, which is pretty quick for me and socks. The yarn SeaStar Handpaints Bare Foot in the “Sweater Weather” colorway. I picked it up in 2018 (I know this because the label says it’s a 2018 exclusive colorway), and it’s nice to be knitting some of the “older” yarn out of my stash. The colors are great for the fall, and I’m looking forward to wearing them. Feel free to check out my project page on Ravelry for more details.

Next up? More socks for me. Still with SeaStar Handpaints, but this time in DK weight. This came as a kit and I can’t believe I’ve let it sit in my stash for a couple of years without knitting it. Stay tuned!

Until next time, keep on knitting for the ones you love!

-greg

Email: greg@KnittingDaddy.com
Blog: KnittingDaddy.com
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Ravelry Group: Knitting Daddy Designs

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