Leaves, completed and new

As of Wednesday, my Sockapalooza socks are on their way to Washington! I hope my pal likes them. I certainly do. In fact, at the risk of appearing immodest, I love, love, love these socks. I actually loved everything about this project – the yarn, the needles, the pattern, the finished object, everything.

These are also the most intricate socks I have ever made, and I’m pleased beyond words that I finished and sent them out a mere one day late. That’s a record for me with knitted gifts. Baby steps.



Project Specs
Pattern: Embossed Leaves socks from Favorite Socks
Yarn: Claudia Handpaint fingering, quite a bit less than 2 skeins (for the thousandth time, I did not run out of yarn despite my fears), Colorway Peony
Needles: Lantern Moon rosewood needles, size 2
For: my sock pal, roughly a size 9 foot I think, but I bet I could knit them for myself using the same yarn and slightly larger 3 mm – size 2.5 – needles

There’s so very much to love about these socks – the simple-to-execute yet intricate-looking lace pattern…(which will look quite a lot nicer and less stretched-to-the-very-edge-of-the-yarn’s-capacity-across-my-chubby-arches on my sock pal, I hope, as her feet are about ½ inch smaller than mine in every dimension)…



…the star toe decrease, which actually completes the last leaf repeat (hard to see here, but brilliant, I assure you)…and the garter stitch heel, which makes for perfectly smooth, hole-free gussets…not to mention the charming striping of the variegated yarn on the sole…altogether lovely, I think.



Really, the only problem I had was that each repeat of the lace pattern starts with purl stitches. On the first sock, I faithfully started each 16-stitch repeat at the beginning of a needle, which meant starting the needle with purls. This did result in some loose and wonky-looking stitches, as I feared.



But that’s a tiny thing, and I’m more than willing to overlook it. I rejiggered the stitches on my needles for the second sock, and that made a big difference. Lesson learned.

And speaking of lessons, I was never great about responding to comments, and in the last month I’ve pretty much abandoned both commenting and responding to comments entirely. And for that I apologize. I have been reading your blogs and enjoying your comments, but I’m hopelessly behind. So I’m borrowing from Risa (see, I have been reading) who said she is starting fresh, rather than trying to catch up.

I will be better about it in the future, because I so appreciate the insight, humor, advice and support I’ve found among knitters and readers.

Ok, awkward sentimental moments aren’t my best thing… so, uh, have you seen the new Interweave Knits? With the Tangled Yoke Cardigan? Have you seen how the cables go SIDEWAYS? And that it’s made out of tweed – tweed that I ALREADY HAVE IN SUFFICIENT QUANTITY IN MY STASH?

There’s just the teensy problem of reading the stupid chart to get around. There’s no way I’ll be able to tell all those cable symbols apart. I’m thinking I might photocopy the chart, blow it up to a reasonable size and highlight the different symbols in different colors. Colors I can follow. Mysterious twisty symbols, not so much. What think you?

There’s probably also the problem of endless miles of stockinette stitch and button bands and seaming and the little niggling thought that I should probably finish Wicked first, but did I mention the sideways cables?? And the tweed??

Mmmm… tweed…