Thursday, December 15, 2016

12 days of Christmas socks.....

Actually, that should say 12 days of knitting socks for Christmas but I was going for the headline ;-)! You probably knew I wouldn't be knitting Christmas-y stuff anyway!
I did plan it to see if I could keep up the pace. Now, knitting one pair of socks in a day is not a big deal but to keep it going for 12 days was the thing! And I did discover a few things along the way.
A while ago I bragged that I could get 3 pairs of ladies socks out of 2 - 100g balls of sock yarn. Well, that was when I thought a 100g ball was really 100g...I had made a pair of ladies 7s earlier from 'Tropical' and given them away without weighing them and now had a full ball and the part left over. I wound the full ball onto a cone and knit a pair of 8.5s (final weight 62g), leaving me with 2 partial cones. I originally thought I could easily make another pair of 7s but I thought the remainders looked a little on the small side. Weighed them and I only had a scant 58g and I thought, what the? Now, I have to say that I don't waste a drop! I actually start out with a tail of less than 8 inches at the beginning of the cast-on to use for seaming the rib cuff up the back of the sock and I never worry about whether I am 'matching' the stripes of the sock, I just start knitting the next sock wherever I left off with the last one. I still had 4 brand-new, whole balls, still banded, untouched. I weighted them and had a range of 92g up to 104g!! wow! that is quite a difference. I even went and got a pound of butter to check my scale - it was bang on, even measuring each stick! Now strangely, the heaviest ball was the darkest colourway, but that shouldn't matter - they are calling it 100g either way but it isn't! I did get the third pair done as a size 6 narrow...no big deal because I do have two girls who are size 5.5 shoe size - I usually go up a half size for these socks because I have found that they wear better if not too tight/short where your toes are pushing through the end all the time.
Oh yeah, and I have revamped my 'warm-up sox' pattern to include all the little changes I've made over the past few years, including size variations for both men and women...if you want it, email me...knitwords@shaw.ca...you still have time to get a few in for Christmas!

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