Monday, August 24, 2009

FO: Glynis

Last week we had to drive from my MIL's house in southeastern Vermont to my parents' new abode in southeastern Maine. As anyone who has ever tried to drive from Vermont to Maine knows, yuh can't get theah from heah.

Well, you can get there, it just takes 5 hours. Or forever, depending on how many children you have in the car with you. The good news is that, even after driving part of the way, I still had time to finish up some socks.

Glynis

Pattern: Glynis by Cookie A, from Sock Innovation
Yarn: Green Mountain Spinnery Sock Art Forest, 70% wool, 30% Tencel, 400 yds/100 gr
Needles: US size 1/2.25 mm (do I knit socks with anything else? Apparently not)
Gauge: Close enough to the required gauge so as not to have to make any alterations
Comments/mods: Again, a very fast knit from Cookie A. Although, to be fair, I did knit 6 pattern repeats on the leg instead of 9, and the socks are plenty long enough. There is a slight caveat to the leg chart: at the end of row 5 you have to shift the start of the row to the right by one stitch. I managed to notice this before I'd done too much damage, but some others weren't so lucky...

Glynis

I didn't change anything on the heel flap/gusset/foot at all. There was a small error in my version of the foot chart in row 8, but it was pretty straightforward to figure out (k2tog instead of k3tog). There are some errata for the book available, so for future installments I will check the errata before starting off.

I did change the toe, as promised. Instead of decreasing every other row 12 times, I decreased every third row three times, every other row four times and every row five times. I realize that the mathematicians out there will have noticed that this is more decreases then called for in the pattern. But I've recently taken to reading all grafting instructions as "Decrease to a small number of stitches, cut off your yarn, thread through the remaining stitches and pull tight". This has been necessitated by the fact that a) I have maybe three darning needles left out of some ludicrous number (like 15) and I don't know where they are and b) I cannot remember how to graft to save my life. This is much easier.

Glynis

The yarn: I liked this yarn less then the yarn I used for the Pomatomuseseses. It felt a bit harsh in my hands, and was a bit stiff to work with, unlike the Forest which was wonderfully supple (and ended up really soft after blocking). I will admit that I have not yet blocked these at all, so they may soften up quite a bit, but in the future I'll stick to the mohair version of GMS sock yarn.

You may have realized that finishing these socks* meant I could start my obsession. Which I did. But that will have to wait for another post...

* Two FO posts in a row with socks? What is the world coming to?

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I think my Glynis socks are cursed. I finished the 1st one after a huge false start. Yeah!
Last night I cast on the second one, knit 15 rows of ribbing as I had written in my pattern notes, and 1 full pattern repeat...
but the ribbing is much deeper and the circumference looks bigger too.
One thing I didn't note was needle size. I think I picked up the wrong one, but it was the only needle out of its package.
Tonight I will break the yarn and start again on the next smaller needle as see if that looks like the first sock.

AAARRRGGGHHH! Why am I sabotaging myself on this pattern???

porpoise said...

Because you like making your life difficult. Really, really difficult.

Good luck!