Love Hurts

Oh, how I love this hat, but it is treating me badly. The WBBF asked for a hat for Christmas. He picked out the yarn on our trip to Ashland, saw a hat he liked at the outdoor theater, then picked the stitch pattern from my Vogue Stitchionary (I am one lucky girl, I tell you). The half of the hat you see below is great. Love it. Was such fun to make, enjoyed every stinking minute and was almost sad when it was over.

Dale of Norway Falk, Vogue Stitchionary "Butterfly Effect"

It is lined to make it nice and cozy and compensate for that whole less-elastic side effect of stranded color-work. It fits. No, it doesn’t just fit, it fits perfectly. And he professes to love it.

The crown? Oh yeah, the part that isn’t there anymore? Did I forget to mention that in my hat love-fest?

Ripped out.

I think I hear the ode to my socks playing in the back of my head…. It was too small (short, actually, left his poor little ears exposed in a very unfriendly fashion). Happily, the fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants pattern came together well, and I was not all that satisfied with my work on the crown anyway, but still, the holidays are no time to be spending time ripping back and starting over. There are deadlines, people, deadlines! And I was almost thinking I was ahead of schedule (pride goeth before the fall), ah well….

Composing a little song to my socks

It goes:

Tink, Tink, Tink, Frog,

Tink, Frog,

Tink, Frog,

Tink, Tink... Tink, Frog....

I bet you get the picture.

But, like someone with a sensitive stomach that still eats spicy food, I keep coming back for more. I love these socks.

I have ripped the toe out (because I wasn't paying attention and shot way past the cable twist), the entire foot (because I was impatient and didn't check my gauge), the heel flap (because I didn't like the way I was twisting the stitches), and most recently, about half the leg (because I (once again) wasn't paying attention and went way off the pattern, apparently intending to make a sock for a much taller person). I have tinked back more than I would be inclined to admit, if I could even recall. Almost always for really dumb things, too.

Through it all the yarn has remained resilient, springy, not fuzzed up one little bit and is still treating me like a queen. After all I have done to it. I can not say enough about how wonderful the yarn is, oh, and the color, soooo beautiful!

This pattern is quite well written, and very engaging. I wish I were a little more disciplined, then I might, oh, read it? Yes, I think that would help immensely.

Thank goodness I am thoroughly enchanted with the yarn and pattern, I am sure I would have given up otherwise. I am a very slow learner, apparently.

But I am so completely happy with my single, finished sock that i could not care less about these little disputes the sock and I may have had in the past. That is all behind us. The sock fit is amazing, the yarn is not only beautiful to look at, it is a soft treat for my feet.

I fear I may need to wait to knit the second sock until after my holiday knitting is done, and that makes me very sad indeed.

For now, I am just wondering if this is too odd a look to finish out my workday with. Probably.

Sottopassagio, knit in Black Sheep Dyeworks Fig Multi

Oh, the difference a single stitch makes!

So, I am making these socks for my boyfriend (he is amazing and I suspect it would disgust most anyone reading this if I were to wax poetic about how great I think he is, so I won't) from yarn he picked out. I would not have picked this stuff for him, but he likes more color than I realized. And it is very pretty and nice to work with (see? I am starting on how great he is again).

Anyway, I have these two matching skeins that are dyed by a computer, started them together, exactly the same....

And yet, my socks do not match....

I can't tell you how many times I thought I counted the stitches on each sock to make sure I had the same number. Turns out, if you keep counting the same sock over and over, that does not, in fact, help you figure out that you have different numbers of stitches on the back of your two socks. Who knew?

Ah, hubris, my old friend....

Lucky for me, he says he likes them this way. We'll see what happens now that I have added a stitch to the back side of the short sock and will correct the stitch count when I am finished with the heels.