Knitting Pete's "Candy Corn" Socks

I've been making and making and making rather than blogging lately.

In fact I have to go check the brownies I have in the oven. Be right back...

Not ready yet.

But here's a shot of Pete's socks in that special "Candy Corn" yarn I was talking about. As you can see I'm making them "toe up" using a pattern from Interweave Knits Summer 2007. The cast-on took me about half an hour and lots and lots of cursing to figure out. More thorough instructions and one or two more illustrations might have helped. On the other hand if the instructions were clearer I wouldn't get to feel as proud of myself for figuring out what they meant.

I haven't cussed that much in quite a while. It was fun. You start with twelve stitches on three splinter-sized double-pointed needles (six stitches on one and three and three on the other two) and do four "make one" increases each round until the point where you make four "make one" increases every other round. It was so annoying! I got so tense that I broke one of my needles.* The person who wrote the pattern said that one of the best things about it is that you don't have to work the Kitchener stitch. Personally I'd rather do the Kitchener stitch over one twelve-stitch row than have to do so many rounds of tiny Make One's.

There is one great thing about this pattern: a table explaining how many increases to make for a range of gauges and foot sizes. That is very helpful since Pete and I have big feet.

The main reason I'm using this toe-up pattern is that I'm paranoid about running out of yarn. I'm always paranoid about it. I always make swatches because I tend to be a loose knitter. If the gauge isn't right I'll unravel the swatch and do it over. When I finally get the swatch right I'll unravel that one too and use the yarn again in the main project. I'm not sure that the small amount of yarn I save makes any difference in the end but it does make me feel better.

At this point I've done all the toe increases and I'm just doing plain rounds until I get to the heel. I think the hard part is over. Honestly I have enjoyed the challenge. It seems that I tend to pick projects based on the fact that I'd like to own the sweater. This can lead to some pretty dull knitting since I like kind of plain sweaters. All the effort and extra cussing that this pattern required was kind of refreshing.

In other knitting news I ordered some of that Noro sock yarn and it has arrived. It's beautiful but it's also got the diameter of thread. Hopefully the colors will keep me going.

*I broke the point off about two inches down. It's a 7" wooden needle so I think I'll just sand down the jagged edge and keep using it as a 5"er.