Hello Again! I've Made Socks!

Okay, it's time to reboot this blog!  I've got all my old knitting and crafting stuff on here, so it's worth picking up where I left off, right?  It only makes sense.

I've really missed blogging about my knitting.  Since I last posted I've made my own pattern, knit plenty of fingerless gloves, thrown together a few hats, and even knit a couple of pairs of socks.  I've taken big old gaps off of knitting too, which only makes sense.  I'm not so much a summer knitter.  It's about that time of the year when I get back into the swing of things.

So, what's on my needles?  Well, I just finished a pair of really awesome socks.  Unfortunately, I'm not in love with them.  The heel is too loose, so I'm looking into options to snug it up.  I'm probably going to rip the whole thing apart to the heel and redo that whole section.  It's better that than have a pair of socks I'm not happy with.  Sometimes I think the work is just worth it.  After all, socks are a lot of work!

As for the yarn, I absolutely adore it.  Unfortunately, it's still too scratchy for me.  I'm going to have to wear them with a pair of silk sock liners or something, because I can tolerate that kind of thing with a barrier.  It just bothers me that I'm not able to wear lovely socks like that.  I love them.  I want to wear them.  I just need to do some work on them first.  We'll see how it goes!

The pattern is a modified version of Black Rose.  I don't like knitting heel flaps, so I blended in a little bit from Cat Bordhi's New Pathways for Sock Knitters: Book One.  I took the idea of the heel gusset she used instead of a heel flap.  Unfortunately, I was dead tired when I did the math, so I ended up with a heel gusset that was far too large.  I went based on the number of stitches picked up for the heel flap in the pattern, not by the number of stitches the pattern was around.  This means my heels are baggy.  That's thankfully not the hardest fix in the world.  And, worst case scenario, I rip the whole thing out and knit them again!  I'm really not going to cry about knitting them again.  It was a lovely pattern and I loved working with it.

Overall, I found the pattern for the socks to be decently well written.  I attempted the gloves, but I had problems with the pattern, then ran out of yarn.  Her instructions were confusing, and the whole thing was far too wide for my think wrists.  It was surprising to see that her size small wasn't much smaller than the smallest size of the socks!  I wouldn't recommend her glove pattern, but I definitely love the socks.

Now my daughter wants me to knit her a pair of them too.  Who can blame her?  They're absolutely lovely.  Maybe if I knit these up again from scratch I'll make them for her.  As I said, the yarn was a bit scratchy for me.  I prefer something that's a little less rough textured, if I were to have my preferences.  We'll see how it works up in the end.  It's a lovely yarn, so I'm not sure I'd ever have the heart to part with it!