Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Mohair and me

I talked to my friend Ady yesterday.  The socks I gave her fit perfectly, and I wish I could say the same for the ones I am knitting for myself by way of replacement.

Here they are yesterday around noon, after already being frogged back once from the heel (yes, both of them) for being half an inch too long.  This time I noticed they were half an inch too narrow, though how I managed to miss that during the trial for foot length I do not know.

Maybe I'm just too distracted to be designing my perfect socks right now?

Anyway, after I took that picture I frogged them back to the toes, added four more stitches to each one, and moved forward, resolutely ignoring the fact that the stitches are no longer sitting evenly owing to the yarn being so kinky now.  Sock #1 is ready for its gusset, and Sock #2 is my travel knitting for today, and I might (ha!) still have a new pair of socks to show you on Monday.

The ha! is not just skepticism. I got distracted by some other mohair socks stuff in the stash I'd been saving for a hat until I came to my senses.  It's an older Fleece Artist kit for mittens or socks, and the idea is to knit with a strand of mohair that's been hand-dyed in the same colours as a strand of blue faced leicester. 

I'm getting 5 stiches to an inch, and am therefore working with 46 stiches, and I can guarantee you when I get to the heel gusset I will realize that is not enough.  So I am either going to have to frog back a bit now just in case, or I can add an extra st on either side of the top of the foot when I get into the gusset, and because ripping back mohair that is this hairy and also I am pretty sick of frogging you can guess which option I'm probably going to choose.

What I love about the Fleece Artist ones: soooo pillowy! and all the fuzz is sitting on the purl side for reasons I'm not questioning.  They are going to be so soft and warm when I finally finish them in May.

2 comments:

Karen said...

Beautiful! My one caution about Fleece Artist for socks is that while they look amazing the first time you wear them, you cannot just throw them in the wash (even cold wash on Delicate) and expect them to survive. All my FA socks have either shredded or matted so badly they are pretty much unrecognizable, so I've vowed to a) never use it again for socks, and b)if I forsake a), to wash them only by hand, inside out, with as little agitation as possible.

Mary Keenan said...

h'mmmmm... well, I do wash all my socks by hand in cold water with Soak and nothing more arduous than a tiny amount of squeezing, but it's not too late to make top-down mittens, either...