I am making a concerted effort this year to buy less yarn, use what I have, and finish things. So far I’m doing well! This is my first finished object of 2008 and I have yet to buy any yarn. Of course, we’re only 22 days into the year, but I need to constantly congratulate myself in order to keep this up.



Some of you may have noticed these socks are knit sideways… What fun! I loved this pattern. Here are the specifics (I wrote basically the same things on my ravelry page for this project), with my comments:

pattern: sidewinders: a perpensockular pattern, from nonaKnits
yarn: Schachenmayr nomotta Regia Crazy Color 4-ply / 4-fädig
needles: US2 circulars
stared: 12/27/07
completed: 1/21/08

size: My foot measured up the longest length available in the medium width. I was very careful with my gauge swatch. I had the proper stitch gauge, but my row gauge was a little bit off, so I decided to knit the wide-width sock to make up for this. The socks fit pretty well, but if I did it again I would make the medium width so they would be a bit more snug.

mods: dear God, if I could have figured out how to modify this pattern in some useful way on my first time through, that would just be unholy, wouldn’t it. It was exciting to follow a pattern sort of blindly – that’s something I rarely do. Apparently, I like to mess with stuff, as Abbey pointed out (hi Abbey!). I couldn’t ever tell if I was going horribly awry or anything because it was impossible to tell what was actually going on most of the time! That felt weird. But thank GOD, everything turned out great.

regarding grafting: My seam isn’t beautiful, but it’s not because of my grafting, it’s because of my cast-on. I did the provisional cast-on on another circular needle of a slightly smaller size (it was an addi turbo US 1.5). When I’ve done provisional cast-ons in the past I’ve had to be careful to keep it loose, otherwise I can’t get the needle through the stitches later on. Well, I should have made this one tighter.

Would I knit this one again? Absolutely!!! What fun. I’d love to make ones with a sole and heel in garter stitch (why can’t I remember if the bottom of a sock/shoe is a soul or a sole? graduate school is really breaking me down.) for added squishyness. Also, I saw a comment on one of Nona’s posts wondering if she had considered working up both sides from the cast-on – in other words, starting at the seam on the back/bottom, working up both sides, and meeting in the middle instead of starting on the back/bottom and working all the way around your foot. That sounds like a great idea to me, so maybe I’ll try that next time. And if you’re the person who wrote that brilliant comment on Nona’s blog and by some freak occurrence you are reading this, please let me know, so that I might acknowledge your brilliance.

And for amusement purposes, here’s one of my reject photos from this shoot. Here’s what happens when I try to take pictures of my own feet:



Pretty.

eta: Who knew – I finished some red/pink/orange socks just before the start of Project Spectrum 3.0! Cool.

Perhaps this is why everything I knit has dog hair wound around every single stitch:



This is what happens when knitting is left unattended on the couch. It becomes a dogpillow. Incidentally, I’ve never known a dog that insists on having a pillow before. Very strange.

Here’s what’s currently on my knitting docket:

finish that pink thing (almost there – probably this can get done within 48 hours, depending on how much time I spend procrastinating on this last paper)
knit the other felted clog for my dad (I’m giving this one a period of three days)
finish up that dish cloth you see the yarn for above. (yes, I do eat off dishes that have been washed in dog hair.)

Besides these items of immediate necessity, I need to get back to the following things:
raspy:


tree jacket


And Peto would apparently like some mittens.
I would like some more hand-knit socks. I’d say the sidewinders are next up, followed by the over-the-knee socks from Handknit Holidays.