I tried. Honestly, I did. I snagged my Regia and proceeded to cast on 125 little tiny stitches using a provisional cast-on. And then I did it again because I wasn’t happy with the way my provisional cast-on turned out. Then I muttered and cursed because I wanted to get that second set of 125 provisionally-held stitches off the needle I was using and onto waste yarn…and then I decided I didn’t like what the Regia was doing and decided to switch to some nice variegated Cascade, and the thought of going through that hell again just made me call a stop to the whole crazy endeavour.
That is why I cast on for a pair of very simple toe-up self-striping socks with toes and (afterthought) heels made out of black Kroy. I’m using some yarn that was tucked away in the stash: Schoppel-Wolle Sockenklecks Edition Tausendschön. I have no idea what that means, whatsoever. All I know is that it came already knit up as a scarf. I gather that the idea is that you wear and unravel the scarf while you knit it into socks. Myself, I unravelled it first, re-skeined it, washed it in SOAK, and dried it by hanging it off the shower bar in the main bathroom. It stayed skeined up for the past 6 months or so, and only last night made it into the nice puck you see there. It’s really really soft and nice to knit with.
I’m very surprised that there aren’t more socks knit from this stuff. It’s pretty nice. Maybe folks preferred to have the scarf! Myself, I love me some stripey socks. I need even more stripey socks. Going to have to do something about that.
The other thing on my needles right now, at least that I’m actively working on, is a scarf. I call it my “rescue scarf”. I recently changed departments at work, and had to go through the bin that all my stuff was stored in. I found things that were over 8 years old in that bin; thankfully nothing that could decompose. This was what I considered my “emergency knitting”, for those days when I forgot to bring my day-to-day knitting. Yes, it has happened that I’ve gotten to work and realized that I’d forgotten my knitting at home. I essentially rescued the scarf from the bin, brought it home and transferred it to straight needles for faster knitting. Yes, I said faster. I find scarves go faster on straight needles, at least when i don’t need to do a lot of silly things like lace or cables.
At any rate, the yarn is Paton’s Shetland Chunky, which I think has a bit of Alpaca in it. For all I know, it’s 100% pure acrylic, but it feels really nice to knit with so I rather like it. The pattern is the ever-popular One Row Scarf by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee. Really easy scarf to knit with a very attractive finish. I like it as a gentleman’s scarf, as it seems to go well with everything from a ski jacket to a dress coat.
I figure that I’ll take it easy on this year’s lead-in to Yule, and if I get the urge to cast those Sidewinder socks on again? Well, we’ll see what happens 🙂
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