Be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape the frog pond.
I’ve been invited to a rather elegant St. Patrick’s Day Pub Crawl, and it stands to reason that for such an occasion I ought to wear my Imbas socks – right? Only… one of those dirty little not-so-secrets along the lines of the shoemaker’s child going barefoot: I don’t have Imbas socks. I have Imbas sock. In the breathless runup to Rhinebeck I spent so much time reworking and documenting the prototype that I never had a chance to make its mate – talk about your Second Sock Syndrome! And then there was the breathless aftermath of Rhinebeck, during which it seems like I hardly ever had a chance to lay hand to needle at all, let alone catch up with unfinished business. So now (nearly five months later! and not exactly less swamped, I might add) is the first chance I’ve had to haul the rest of that yarn out of mothballs (actually out of Jennifer’s delicious herbal moth-away blend, which adds a whole ‘nother dimension of sensual pleasure to knitting from my stash) and make up #2.
Set out blithely and was pleased to find how quickly the pattern came back to my fingers. (Also pleased/relieved to find the written pattern pretty lucid, for those places where I needed to use my own materials for a refresher.) Then compared the sock in progress to the prototype… and was SHOCKED at the difference in gauge! Some of this is probably attributable to blocking – but some of it is just me being inconsistent. Hubris must be goeth-ing before a fall again, because I seem to have been under the impression that I was immune to this common problem. Well, HA! – no I sure ain’t. I was so taken aback I thought at first I might have accidentally picked up the wrong size needle. Nope. The only other measurable difference is that I think I worked the original one with a cable needle, whereas now I’m air-cabling. Maybe I’m not adjusting enough for the slack? Maybe. But that doesn’t account for differences in the overall fit. Be all which as it may – I finally had to face the music and frog. Not back to cast-on – just couldn’t bear that, and besides I daren’t take the time. But back to almost the beginning of the cable pattern, and I will be knitting more tightly now.
No pictures. I don’t feel like humiliating myself further.
Actually, that isn’t true. I’d be totally willing to humiliate myself further, only… as usual, I forgot all about “Before” pictures until after I’d already done the frogging. So you’ll just have to take my word for it: it was bad.
Blue Stocking Update
I’m about half-way through writing up the pattern. The hard part (the fancy new heel) is still ahead, but a lot of the grunt-work is already done, so I don’t anticipate it taking too long. This will be the first pattern I’ve published for download, and I’m going to take advantage of the flexibility of the medium. I know that once I had the idea I was burning to get it on the needles in time for the 22nd… and I figure the sooner I post it the better, even if that means the initial versions are a bit piecemeal, just in case anyone else feels the same way about it that I did. So here’s the plan: the usual technique sections (my personal takes on provisional cast-on, short-rowing, etc.) will not be incorporated into this pattern – not at first, anyway. This way I can get the actual sock pattern posted that much faster, so if you already know how to do those things (or if you already have one of my other patterns on hand), you’ll be able to leap straight into the breach. Meanwhile, of course I do have those things written up, so I will reformat and post them as separate documents as soon as possible after putting up the pattern. And after THAT I will re-format the relevant portions of last night’s post on Veil Stitch into another downloadable chunk. Then eventually I will take all those pieces and meld them into one document or at least into a uniform set, suitable for framing. Or for knitting from, which is rather more the point, isn’t it.
Beranda
Whatsapp
Daftar
Promosi
Telegram