Thursday, May 25, 2006

I was gonna be so proud...

I must digress for a moment...

Did you see American Idol last night?! Oh my f*&%!$ing gosh!!!! PRINCE!!! (or whatever he is currently known as) -Prince on American Idol?!!!! Whatever, he was brilliant as always, but I swear my jaw dropped to the floor. Made my day in a sick kind of way.

Now- on to the knitting. So, I have been working on a sock. A beautiful pattern from Sensational Knitted Socks. The Socks That Rock colorway (Lemongrass) was beautiful and it was striping nicely with no major pools. See? :


Gauge: 8 st/in on #2 dpn's.
Yarn: Socks That Rock- med. wt.

But now I am realizing that it is just too big. See, since it is a 8-stitch pattern I had to cast on 80 stitches instead of my usual 72. I thought it would be a better choice than the alternate 64 stitches. Everything looked fine, I don't exactly have dainty legs so I figured I was good to go. I cast on, I knit, nice pattern and then I started to run into a problem around the ankle. It just was looking downright beefy. So, I decreased all the way down to 72 (rather than 80) stitches at the heel gusset but now the pattern is just too big over the instep and the whole thing is just looking a bit large. Plus, it is also starting to pool with the green on one side and the yellow on the other. Fine, but it doesn't exactly match the rest of the sock. So, I figure my choices are as follows:

a) Rip it all out and start over trying the 64 stitch method. Stick with the #2 needles and pray that it stripes nice.

b) Rip it all out and cast on 64 stitches with a slightly larger needle size, #2 1/2 or 3. This would make the sock a little bit bigger, but might make it less comfortable and/or make the pattern look a little "looser". Not sure. Keep praying that it stripes nice.

c) Finish the sock and hope that it will shrink a little in the wash- although this still doesn't solve the instep or the puddle of color issue.

Any and all advice will be welcomed.

6 comments:

Rhiannon said...

If it is a 8 stitch pattern, why don't you just use your 72 stitch sock? Or is it a 16 stitch pattern?

Cindy/Snid said...

Well, I think that you are supposed to have an even # of pattern repeats. So if I cast on 72 stitches that would give me 9 pattern repeats rather than 8 (64 stitches) or 10 (80 stitches). I believe the reason why this matters is when it comes time to divide the stitches for the heel you are going to end up in the middle of patterns which makes things a bit tricky. There probably is a way to do this, but I am not sure that I can get my brain around the design process...

Rhiannon said...

One way to do it is to turn the left over stitches into stockinette. So if you were to do your sock on 72 stitches when it came time to do your heel you would (knit 8 in pattern)x2, then knit 2 on the first needle. Then you would knit 36 for your heel flap. This should leave 18 stitches on the third needle. When it comes time to start knitting those stitches on the third needle knit 2 before begining the pattern repeats. here is a drawing of what I am saying, because I don't know if I am saying it very clearly.

Cindy/Snid said...

Oh! Hey- I know I frogged already, but this is actually a great idea for how I can go ahead and do it with 72 stitches. You are brilliant and I am clueless and can't think straight! Thank you so much!!!! The drawing makes it very clear. Thank you so much for thinking of me and helping out of my knitting hole of depair ; )

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