Lonely Socks

Okay, I swear I do NOT have second sock syndrome (lovingly grudgingly called SSS by those struck by it), but I do have “I want to cast on everything right now” syndrome. And no, I won’t put that into an acronym for you. In either case it just so happens that I have a SINGLE sock of every sock that I have on my needles right now, so that’s what I’m going to be updating you all with today – oh and just one more project thrown in at the end for good measure, but let’s take this one sock at a time, shall we?

First up, my Twisted Flower sock (rav link) that I blogged about previously, is and has been finished for about a month now. I really really hope to finish this one by the end of May, but we’ll see how successful I’ll be at that. In either case, the sock has turned out lovely, if I do say so myself. I just adore this pattern – even though it is very complicated and not for the faint hearted – and can’t wait until I have the pair done so I can actually wear them!

The yarn is lovely for the pattern too, showing off the cables beautifully with gorgeous stitch definition – and it’s incredibly soft to boot! What more could you ask for?

I love the back of the sock so much! Here’s the back of it up to the heel. It looks just gorgeous from this vantage point, methinks.

Moving on to yet another Cookie A. sock, I’m knitting Glynis (rav link) from the Sock Innovation book for my Makin’ Cookies KAL that I mentioned previously – basically we’re knitting one pair of socks a month from the book. This sock has given me way more problems than it should have. First, I picked this beautiful Fiberphile yarn to knit it up with only to find that it was way too busy for the pattern and I couldn’t see what was going on with it at all:

Although I do like the color of the yarn a lot (and will be using it for another pair of socks), this pattern just did not work out with it how I liked it to. Case in point, I forgot to move markers at the end of every 5th pattern row so instead of the pattern going down in a straight line, as it should have done, it was going down in a diagonal (notice how the yo’s are going down):

Not only that, but when I tried on the socks I found that they were very tight, which I was very surprised about until I realized that I was knitting with needles one size too small – yes I am very smart, why do you ask? So it went the way of the frog pond… let’s all have a moment of silence for this unfinished sock that will never be.

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Moving on…

After taking a day (or two) to mourn the loss of all that work, I dug through my stash and found a lovely Socks that Rock in Siren Song that I thought might do the trick. And what do you know? It did! I just love how this yarn knit up and the swirling pooling effect actually went with the pattern so well, I fell in love with the pooling too… how’s that for a come back from the previous frogging?

Just so you can see the awesome swirly pooling better:

And, of course, the finished sock:

Honestly, as much as I love how these socks turned out, I am not really a fan of the actual pattern. Usually I can get into a pattern pretty quickly and just “see” where it’s going to take me after about one or two repeats. With this one, it just never clicked with me. It’s not that it’s hard – the repeats are very easy – it just was not that intuitive to me. So I’m hoping that maybe with the second sock it will become intuitive? Maybe? Well, until then, I’ll leave with with more awesome pooling on the sole of the sock:

And for good measure my favorite part of the this pattern – the cable-like swirls formed by the pattern – highlighted in a picture:

And just when you thought I couldn’t be possibly knitting another sock, I surprise you yet again (it’s all part of my evil plan to, errr, confuse you? hehe)! For here’s a THIRD pair that is only halfway done, with a lonely sock just waiting for its mate. This sock is actually my first toe-up and honestly I’m not enjoying it that much. So far, the fit of it is just not as nice as the fit of the cuff-down socks I’ve done so far, but then again maybe I just need more practice? These are the Diamond Gansey Socks (rav link) from the Socks from the Toe Up book by Wendy Johnson.

Sorry for the crap pictures! I was tired when I took these or something… here are some nicer ones from when I was starting out the toe (my first toe up, remember? :)):

These are a gift for my mother and as she’s not into lace-type socks, I thought they would be perfect for her. I think she will love them… I just hope they fit! On second thought, I probably should NOT have made my first toe up socks ever a gift, huh? Um, oops?

And just when you think that there’s no end to all this sock knitting, I bring you, at long last, to a non-sock project… that is knit with sock yarn, haha! It’s a lovely shawl – the Ulmus shawl (rav link) – that I can’t wait to get done! I think it will be gorgeous when it’s finished and I am SO excited about my chosen color combo, which looks awesome knit up. It’s Malabrigo sock in Lettuce and Solis:

And caked up:

And finally, knitted up:

Can we say GORGEOUS? Because I can!

It reminds me SO MUCH of the Brazilian flag and as such of growing up in Brazil and of going back to see my family! So it’s pretty obvious that I’m really loving knitting up this shawl. It’s currently my on-the-bus knitting project, so it probably won’t go very fast, but that’s okay as I’m enjoying knitting it too much to make it go by fast!

I will update the next post with some awesome knit-related stuff I got that I want to share with you guys… I was going to do it with this post but it’s already way too long and I know most of you are probably nodding off by now, no? So before I head off, here’s a picture of the pups to send you off with a smile instead of a snore!