Yarn

First things first: how the heck is it June already? This year has absolutely FLOWN by and it’s freaking me out. You always hear that time moves faster the older you get but this is ridiculous!

Anyway, onto what you come here for:

Sometimes all I want is some mindless stockinette to knit . . . granted that doesn’t explain starting yet another new sock instead of knitting the mate to one of the many single socks wandering my apartment, but it’s definitely the main reason I end up starting a new sock project. In this case, I wanted to knit stockinette that had some challenge to it, and the Skew socks kept popping up in my mind. This pattern is so subtle yet interesting and unusual, I queued it the second I saw it.

Knitting the sock was an exercise in “just trust the pattern” — this thing is knit in a crazy manner! I marveled at the designer’s skill in coming up with the design in the first place and also writing a clear and easy-to-follow pattern. This isn’t the sort of design that you can just say “keep going until the foot is 7″ long,” almost every line is written out and half the sock is different for the right foot and the left! Once I got past the heel I grafted it together to try to figure out what was going on, and after that I was able to visualize the sock and knit the leg almost without referencing the pattern. The way she handled changing directions to knit the ribbing straight instead of on an angle is pure genius too, I will definitely be using that technique sometime in the future!

The yarn I’m using is Madelinetosh in the color Bearded Iris. I bought this so long ago that I think they’ve changed the yarn base, as my skein has more yardage and weighs more than the Ravelry entry for this sock yarn specifies. Unfortunately this turned out to be one of those colors that is MUCH nicer in the skein than knit up. I look at the picture of the skein when I bought it and remember why I couldn’t leave it behind:

(I’m also reminded of how much worse my old camera was than my SLR!)

If I had seen the yarn knit up into a pair of socks I probably would have passed on it . . . but it doesn’t matter, I know I’ll wear these even if they aren’t the prettiest socks ever. I think it’s really interesting that even after all these years working almost exclusively with handpainted yarn, I’m still so often surprised by the way a colorway knits up. Looking at the knitted up fabric vs. the skein now, I can totally see that I should have been able to predict it would knit up like this: this is a high-contrast colorway with long pieces of each color, so of course it’s going to knit into a barberpole-type effect. Somehow even though I know this I still manage to picture the skein knitting up into something more subtle . . . I can’t explain it. Well actually, I can explain it: I just love yarn! The truth has always been the I knit because I love yarn, not the other way around. =)

Oh, and I will probably knit this pattern again in another color to better do it justice, too! Plus it’s tons of fun.

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