sans aiguille

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Related posts:
28Mar2009 post (shoe shot, 1 photo).
07Feb2009 post (finished pair, 11 photos).
30Jan2009 post (4 photos).

There's a bit of a crisis Chez Smariek. One of my DPNs seems to have gone awol. I was planted on the sofa with a throw over my lap, knitting with 5 pointy sticks and had set down one of them on my lap (viz. on top of the throw). That DPN went missing moments afterward and I could not find it. Where did it go?! I need it!!!

It couldn't have gone far. I didn't think it had fallen onto the floor because I would certainly hear metal clanking against hard wood. I looked on the floor and under the sofa, nope not there. I looked around me on the sofa and even checked under the cushions, no joy. Just bunnies of the dust variety, missing pen from one of Missy's writing tablet thingies, and crumbs. I even vacuumed while I had all the cushions off the sofa! Feeling good about that accomplishment. Still no missing pointy stick.

DH even helped me look for it. He tells me that the needle has gone the way of Tyler Durden (in this movie, Fight Club) and had never existed. Ok, I am not smoking the carpet. I know my Knit Picks Nickel Plated DPN set came with 5, not 4, pointy sticks -- you can see it here. Five, I say!!!

Practice Pair of Socks #1, Sock #1



Here's what I had been working on until I got derailed by the missing pointy stick. Ma première chaussette! Learning how to do this is one of my goals for this year. And instead of trying it out with some thick yarn and big needles, I jumped right in with sock weight yarn and 2.75 mm pointy sticks.

There's a link to an online sock tutorial, Silver's Sock Class, in the Knitting Resources section of my blog sidebar; I've heard that this tutorial is quite good, however I don't like trying to knit while following instructions on my computer screen and I don't own a printer to print out the tutorial. I'm one of those people who needs printed material in front of me. So I managed to borrow a sock book which has lots of illustrations and I got a very good idea of how a sock is constructed. The only downside of the book is that it has some discrepancies/errors in it which can really throw you off if you don't catch them. I think the book is fairly new, it's dated 2008, so they probably haven't gotten around to releasing a newer edition with the corrections.

The beginning was quite easy. It's very similar to starting a mitt. I began with K2P2 ribbing and thought I would continue this throughout the leg...

You spin me right round, baby
Right round like a record, baby
Right round round round

- 'You Spin Me Around' Dead or Alive

... but as you can see, I switched to stockinette. Round and round we go. I knit so much faster in stockinette than in K2P2 ribbing. I chose K2P2 over K1P1 for the same reason. So far so good, except for ...



... a loose stitch due to one of my needles wrapping around the yarn causing a sort of "YO" effect. There's a tendency for this to happen at the end of a needle and I don't catch it until I've knit around and come back to that point.




I also have difficulties avoiding the laddering effect. Here are 2 (out of 3) ladders on my sock. The strange thing is that I always think the ladder should occur between the V stitches. Like this:

\/\/_\/\/

But instead, mine always occur right inside the V stitches, resulting in a split like this:

\/\/\_/\/\/

Here's the leg. I later tried to reduce the laddering by shifting a couple of stitches from needle to needle as I went around. This was slightly ameliorated on the side closest to the heel (where the stitch markers are).

The heel flap wasn't difficult at all. Here are pics of the front & back.

Now this was a MAGICAL experience! That's the best way to describe the turning of the heel. I read about the theory of sock construction and it didn't quite "click" until I actually did it.

And here we are after completing the gusset shaping. This was a little tricky for me because I didn't concentrate as well as I should have. Instead of decreasing every other round, I might have decreased every 3rd round here and there because I lost track of which round I was in. Yes I know, I'm only repeating 2 rounds! I can't explain why it is easier for me to increase every other round (as in a mitt gusset) than to decrease every other round.

I still need to find that 5th needle. Definitely before I start the toe decreases, I think...

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