Adventures in knitting
Apr. 11th, 2004 10:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
celticdragonflySo I didn't get ANY work done on the broadripple socks yesterday, but managed to get some more done on them today. Finished the leg part, started on the heel flap. Now, I'm doing a modified version of the pattern, to fit a women's large with sock weight yarn, and with this pattern it takes more stitches, 84, instead of my usual 72. So I'm looking at the heel flap, and the 16 rows of it I'd gotten done, and wondering if I should follow the usual pattern, and make it 42 rows long to match the 42 stitches wide, or if that would be too long. I was also wondering about how to manage the foot - at that point the top will stay in the pattern stitch, which needs to be on a larger number of stitches, but the bottom will be in stockinette, which I usually do in the 36 stitch size.
So I talked to my mom, and she recommended that not only should the heel flap only be my usual 36 rows, but it should be my usual 36 stitch width, since that's what I know fits me with this size yarn and needles. And yes, she recommended I have the bottom of the foot be on the 36 stitches, too, with the top staying in the 42-stitch pattern.
To complicate matters, I'd been doing the heel flap in the eye of partridge stitch, which I hadn't done before. And here I was needing to frog out the flap. I'd read the directions here on the Knitty online magazine about how to frog back to a certain row by catching it up on the needles, but that looks a lot easier on the webpage with big stitches in stockinette in solid colors than on little stitches in eye of partridge in variegated yarn! (In poor lighting on a grey cloudy day, too.)
So while sitting in my womens' group tonight I tinked back all 16 rows. Then, to achieve the 36 stitches on the one needle, I tinked back one row of the leg, then redid it - but since I have 3 ripples per side, and each ripple has 2 yarn overs, I just left out the Y/Os to painlessly reduce it down to the 36 stitches.
The nice thing about doing it that way is that when I get down to the last pattern row before doing the toe, I can just do the same thing, leave out the Y/Os in that row, and I'll be down to 36 stitches on top to match the 36 on the bottom, and then I can go ahead and do my usual toe.
So now I'm back to 12 rows of the heel flap, not quite as far as I was, but then I now have less distance to go than I had thought to go. Still working on the eye of partridge stitch. (I hope I'm remembering the right name for that.) Of course, I'll have to get down into the foot and try this on before I'm sure it will work, but it does sound like this gives me the best chance to get a good-fitting sock.
I hope tomorrow I will get the time to work on it some more.
So I talked to my mom, and she recommended that not only should the heel flap only be my usual 36 rows, but it should be my usual 36 stitch width, since that's what I know fits me with this size yarn and needles. And yes, she recommended I have the bottom of the foot be on the 36 stitches, too, with the top staying in the 42-stitch pattern.
To complicate matters, I'd been doing the heel flap in the eye of partridge stitch, which I hadn't done before. And here I was needing to frog out the flap. I'd read the directions here on the Knitty online magazine about how to frog back to a certain row by catching it up on the needles, but that looks a lot easier on the webpage with big stitches in stockinette in solid colors than on little stitches in eye of partridge in variegated yarn! (In poor lighting on a grey cloudy day, too.)
So while sitting in my womens' group tonight I tinked back all 16 rows. Then, to achieve the 36 stitches on the one needle, I tinked back one row of the leg, then redid it - but since I have 3 ripples per side, and each ripple has 2 yarn overs, I just left out the Y/Os to painlessly reduce it down to the 36 stitches.
The nice thing about doing it that way is that when I get down to the last pattern row before doing the toe, I can just do the same thing, leave out the Y/Os in that row, and I'll be down to 36 stitches on top to match the 36 on the bottom, and then I can go ahead and do my usual toe.
So now I'm back to 12 rows of the heel flap, not quite as far as I was, but then I now have less distance to go than I had thought to go. Still working on the eye of partridge stitch. (I hope I'm remembering the right name for that.) Of course, I'll have to get down into the foot and try this on before I'm sure it will work, but it does sound like this gives me the best chance to get a good-fitting sock.
I hope tomorrow I will get the time to work on it some more.
knitting improv style
Date: 2004-04-12 12:36 pm (UTC)Maggie's knit dress was FAB. I can't believe you knit that in such short time, including Jamie's birth. Wow!
Re: knitting improv style
Date: 2004-04-12 02:15 pm (UTC)I have all these logical reasons why mathematically it should. But that's no replacement for trying on the finished sock.
During the babies' nap I finished the heel flap, turned the heel, and picked up the gusset stitches. I tried it on. I really can't tell for sure until I get a lot farther down the gusset, but I have this horrid feeling that it's going to be too short a heel flap.
And I don't know WHAT I'll do if that turns out to be so. It's going to be awful. I can't STAND to tink that much, and if I start frogging, I don't know if I can pick the stitches back up again without losing the whole thing.
I can't see why anybody does the 2 socks at once thing. I know they say they avoid the dreaded second sock syndrome, but I find it far easier to discipline myself to immediately do the second sock than to face experimenting and frogging a new pattern on two socks at once.
Re: knitting improv style
Date: 2004-05-04 03:54 pm (UTC)My solution to both the second-sock problem and the problem of testing to see if something works is to knit a chunk of one sock, then switch to the other. My first actual pair (not singleton) of socks was knit like this: toe1, toe2 + middleoffoot2, middleoffoot1 + gusset1 + heel1, gusset2 + heel2, and then alternating ankles and calves until the yarn ran out. That also let me know where to split the big ball of sock yarn to get the maximum amount of sock out of it.
Re: knitting improv style
Date: 2004-05-04 04:25 pm (UTC)The general idea works a lot better for people doing toe up socks, I think. I tried it once, didn't care for it. Tight-knitting me has worked out a reliable way to cast on loosely enough, but binding off loosely enough, no.