Rows Red

Pattern: Fascine (My own as yet unwritten pattern.)
Yarn: Bittersweet Woolery Miss Priss in Peacock.
Started: September 14th
Finished: November 3rd
Recipient: Me? Mom? Shop display?
Techniques: Toe up, sewn bind off.

Fascine Socks

These socks are the child of a couple different “oops”. To start with, the yarn was one of three skeins I dyed for the Garden State Sheep Breeders show. This particular skein decided to give me fits and become hopelessly tangled, and I ended up cutting the skein in four places. Obviously, I wasn’t going to sell a knotty skein to my customers and the yarn had to stay with me. Aww… what a shame!

Those are some pretty long socks, at least for me.

I took the yarn and some needles with me on my vending journey, and the night before the show I started to plan a sock. Carolyn helped me look up some toe up instructions, which I figured I’d give a try considering I didn’t know how much yarn I had saved. After a rocky start I soon got the hang of casting on for the toe section, and I was on a roll. During the show I had the tiny bit of knitting sticking out of one of Jess’s bags as a display. You can imagine my surprise when a woman who was purchasing the other two skeins asked me if she could buy my project and its odd balls of yarn! She REALLY liked the color. I would have sold it to her if I hadn’t already started the sock and had the idea to use it as a store display.

Subtle color play.

I’m very pleased with the way the dye technique that I’m exploring works with the socks. It really illustrates my goal of yarn that gives you options instead of taking them away. There is variance in the color, and yet it happens in a way that’s very pleasing to my eye. I can easily see this yarn being made into a lace shawl and it coming out just as nice. It’s gratifying to see proof of the vision I had in my head. The stitch pattern, Fascine,  came from one of my Barbara Walker books, and it was really fun to work. Just enough going on that you weren’t bored, but not so mind bending that you couldn’t carry a conversation or watch TV at the same time. I chose it because it’s relatively “busy”, and yet the yarn obviously doesn’t compete with it.

Fascine Braid, simple yet effective.

While working on the sock I ran into trouble again. I was in D.C. for business, happily knitting away, when I decided I didn’t like the stitch pattern I was using, so I ripped. Then realized it was too wide, so I ripped. I cast on fewer stitches and gave it another go, only to realize it was STILL too big and ripped again. Then I didn’t like the fabric of the sock, it was too loose. So I ripped again and bought new needles at a local yarn store. The foot of the first sock was ripped no less than five times by the time I was happy with it. Would you believe the yarn, which has zero nylon and a not-particularly-tight medium twist, has a bit of a halo now but otherwise held up admirably? I was very happy. I’ll be switching from this base yarn to a more firm yarn in the future, but it’s nice to know it did so well, all things considered.

Problem child sock... here you see the nasty original bind off and how much shorter the original leg was.

I was nervous about having enough yarn for the two socks, but not enough to weigh my yarn apparently. I can be silly sometimes. I knit the first sock as you saw in the photo above, then cast off horribly in the usual leap frog manner. Good lord it looked nasty. The second sock went much more quickly than the first, and I knit that one much taller than I normally knit my socks. I looked up a better cast off, and ended up using the sewn cast of in Knitting Without Tears by Elizabeth Zimmerman. What a difference! Then I unpicked the bind off for the first sock and knit it to match the second. Finally, done!

Binding off the sock in the coffe house last night while waiting for others to arrive.

The only thing I didn’t like with the finished socks is the toe method. It pulls under my toes, and it looks goofy when the sock isn’t on my foot. I know there are other ways to start a toe up sock and you can be sure I’ll be exploring them. Mom likes the stitch pattern so much she asked for a pair for herself, which is the perfect opportunity to fix the issue with the toe weirdness and write up the pattern. At that point I’ll be looking for test knitters, one for a plain foot sock like you see here, and one with the stitch pattern following all the way down. More on that later, when I get that far.

Tags: dyeing, FO, Knitting