Tuesday night I took some of my new-favorite boot sock yarn (Cascade 200, believe it or not) some needles and my nifty scale to knit night, and set to starting on a pair of socks for myself that I'd actually finish. I got the skein split (have I mentioned lately that I adore my scale
?), and started in on a 5st/in winter sock.After a rocky start (I was making it up as I went along, following basic sock-building principles and obeying gauge law, which meant I had to rip out the toe a few times), it began to shape up rather nicely.
I was really happy with the toe . . .
. . . and the beaded rib pattern added some visual interest without requiring reading a chart every round. (My instep makes it look wonky in the photo, but it's really verry nice-uh.)
I turned the heel without untoward incident this afternoon (despite the munchkins' best efforts to distract me) . . . and then I noticed something looked a little bit, well, odd.
Despite trying the thing on multitudinous times, and paying proper homage to the gauge gods . . . well, here, I'll show you . . .
It's huge. It would easily fit my grandmother, who wears a size 11 wide. I'm a scant 10 medium, sometimes a 9.5. I would finish this pair and offer them to her, except that she hates bulky socks, and wouldn't like these at all. Sigh. Someday I'm going to manage to score a sock knitting machine and knit her a whole wardrobe of fine-gauge socks. She has the hardest time finding socks that don't make her legs swell because she's just got bigger feet and ankles than everyone else.
I can't just rip back the heel and make it start sooner, because the instep would still be too roomy. How it got too roomy between fitting pretty well over the toe and early part of the foot and the heel is beyond me--the gauge is the same all along the sock, at 5.5st/in. I swatched and planned on 5st/in, followed a pattern in Sensational Knitted Socks
(which I also adore), got a tighter gauge than planned, but somehow still managed to get a sock that's too big.Well, at least it's knit in worsted, and it won't take me all that long to knit it again . . . especially since I'm not sleeping much past 5am these days. Gotta love those aching joints courtesy of the last trimester . . .
