Two Down for Sockdown

Saturday, February 02, 2008

Here's two FO's for Sockdown: Ravelry!

First off, my first FO in 2008! :) (which should've been finished a couple of days ago, but wasn't, and it would've been great to have the first 2008 FO in January, but I didn't) Sockdown January 2008 theme was intarsia or Cookie A. And I chose the latter.

(These will eventually go up in the 2008 FO page but I'm doing some behind-the-scenes stuff with the FO pages so the entire page isn't up yet. Sigh.)

Project: Baudelaire (Ravelry), cast-on: January 1 2008, cast-off: February 2 2008
Pattern: Baudelaire by Cookie A. from Summer 2006 Knitty
Yarn: Apleks Superwash in red, 80 g
Needles: 2.5 mm aluminum circular
Mods: I substituted the heel in the pattern with my favorite heel construction, Revisited Widdershins Heel, and eye of partridge heel. The cuffs were quite snug for my feet so I increased 1 purl stitch between the lace pattern and the cables once every 8th row 5 times (total 10 increased sts), then decreased on the first round of ribbing on the back of leg back to 32 sts.

Me likey! The yarn was bought from Estonia and it isn't the best of yarns to work with but it does plump up nicely after washing.

Here's a side view...

... and a better view of the heel and cuff increases.

Next up: socks for Sockdown: October (Nancy bush or cables). Yes, October. I did blog about these when I cast on but not when I finished.

Project: It's All French to Me (Ravelry), cast-on: October 28 2007, cast-off: November 27 2007
Pattern: Chausettes from Bergère de France. (The pattern is in French.) Click the pink "TELECHARGER" button to download the pattern in PDF format.
Yarn: Hjertegarn Ciao Trunte, color #1380 (sage green)
Needles: 2.5mm aluminum circular needles

(The color's distorted here, much more accurate in the first pic.)

Mods: Lots!

• I made a hidden casing (pictured above) for elastic by casting on with long-tail provisional cast on, knitting in stockinette for 6 rounds, purl across 1 round, and then 6 rounds in k1, p1 ribbing. Then I unpicked the cast-on edge and knit it together with the live stitches.
• I followed the pattern for the cuff otherwise but made it custom-length (= started heel flap when the cuff seemed long enough for me).
• The pattern had a regular slip-stitch heel flap but I wanted to try the eye of partridge heel since I'd never used it before. It looks very nice with the moss stitch pattern! And you can tell I liked it because I used it on the Baudelaires, too. :)
• Next, decreased 5 stitches more on each side (10 total) than what the pattern called for in the gussets. And because I had fewer stitches remaining, I re-calculated the toe decreases... somehow.
• Ran out of yarn! I could only find 1 ball in the same dye lot so the other toe is a little off-colored. You can't tell it in the pictures (and even I can't find it in natural light) but fluorescent light makes it pop up. I loved the first batch of yarn I got (it's very soft and sproingy) but I was surprised and disappointed that a commercially produced yarn would have such drastic differences in color (and even yarn thickness!) between dye lots. :/

Phew, long post today. More sockiness to follow...

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