Thursday, January 17, 2008

oh, varigation...

Oh, handpainted yarns: we had a good thing going, for a pair of socks. The first skein of Blue Ridge Yarns merino sock wool was lovely; it was always a surprise to see what color was coming next, and a deeelightful surprise too. There was no pooling, just a great combo of colors coming one after the next. (OK, there's a bit of a pattern in the sock on the left, but it's really not as noticeable in real life.)

I'm nearly done with the first pair of socks (just need to graft up the toes), and decided to keep riding the wave of rediscovered love for handpainted sock yarn. I'd pretty much forsaken the multi-colored yarns but that sock on the left made me sing a different tune. So I grabbed skein #2 from the stash, and started away on the second pair of socks.

Things didn't start off too well. I wanted to make this pair a little bit bigger, and
soon discovered that 60 stitches in stockinette in skein #2 means a big brown blob running right down one side of the sock. Not acceptable. So I've ripped out, started over with fewer stitches, and am now convincing myself, once again, that I like blobs of color (when I really don't). And now I need to buy a skein of solid color for the heels and toes, so as to not screw up the giant brown swirl. And buying yarn wasn't something I was going to do this year! Really! No caveats this time, just no yarn buying!

Happily, this little hat fulfilled all of my expectations. It's warm, and nice colors, and fast to make. In fact, it went so well that I've started another hat that's coming along swimmingly.

More on that this weekend, when I'll hopefully have some real sunlight in which to take pictures. My environmentally friendly lightbulbs do not make for good photo studio lighting.

5 comments:

~Kristie said...

Did you lose your handpaint sock knitting mojo? Did it leave your house? Maybe it came here!!

LOVE the hat. I'd love to know what yarn that is.

Brenda said...

Great hat!
I think the sock on the right, were it not being compared to the one on the left would look good (provided one didn't mind striping), but the one on the left is really superb. Perhaps a slip stitch pattern or rib to break up the colors? I read of someone doing a 3x1 rib variation to break up an unfortunate multicolor: (round 1,slip the first k st of the 3; round 2, slip the 2nd k st of the 3; round 3, the third; round 4; just knit all three)--repeat those 4 rounds.

Anonymous said...

I can relate to everything you've mentiond about pooling - I've lost count of the number of socks I've frogged! Now, I just use semi-solids.

Anonymous said...

Ooops, that's me above - my url isn't working.

Claire said...

Thanks for the side-by-side, I can definitely tell the difference. And agree with Brenda that the sock on the right only looks goofy by being compared to the one on the left (which is BEAUTIFUL.) But I won't criticize the right sock, since I can see from today's post that you've decided to allow it to life. V. anti-cruelty of you. ;)