One Pomatomus, Two Skeins

I finished the first Pomatomus sock while watching Rachel Maddow last night, but a picture will have to wait for the weekend. I manage to finish kitchenering the toe right at the spot I’d marked as the halfway point of the ball. But when I weighed my sock, then weighed the remaining yarn (all on my trusty Weight Watchers scale; at least it’s getting some use), I seem to have used 1 more gram on the sock than I have left.

Here’s the frustrating thing: I think I’d actually prefer a shorter leg. But the idea of ripping out the first sock and doing it all over again fills me with dread. I’d rather knit up the second sock with what’s left and take the chance of having to do the last couple of rounds with a different yarn.

Speaking of yarn (and aren’t we always, really?), Stacy of Tempted Hand Painted Yarns, well, tempted me over Plurk with new colorways of Glam Grrl. I was helpless to resist, I tell you. And then these lovely things showed up on my doorstep a few days later:

Tempted Glam
Red Diamond

Tempted Glam
Destiny

One of these days, I’ll get my hands on some Branded in Glam Grrl. But that day is not today.

Now That’s A Sock

Embossed Leaves Socks

Two of ’em, in fact.

Specs:
Pattern: Embossed Leaves, by Mona Schmidt, from Interweave’s Favorite Socks
Yarn: Tempted Hand Painted Bad Grrl in the Clover colorway, purchased from her Etsy Shop (You can also get her yarns over at The Loopy Ewe.)
Needles: Size US1.5 bamboo Clover DPNs.
Modifications: Doing an entire first sock and then ripping it out gave me a chance to test out a few things and discover I didn’t like the fit of the specified 1×1 rib cast-on. So, I did my usual cable cast-on followed by the 18 rounds of twisted rib. I refused to cut the yarn after turning the heel, instead picking up the gusset stitches on the first round after the short-rows. Also, I slipped the first stitch on every heel flap row to make picking up those stitches easier.

I love these socks. They’re so pretty! And the yarn is soooo soft and luxurious. If it weren’t 90 degrees out, I’d be wearing them right now. Actually, I almost did wear them to work today anyway, but my green blouse is in the wash. Maybe next week.

Ceci n’est pas une sock

(Yes, I know that “sock” is not the French word for sock.)

That sad loop of yarn was once almost half of a beautiful skein of Tempted Hand Painted Bad Grrl in the Clover colorway. After that, it was a gorgeous Embossed Leaves sock that was, sadly, too big for my foot, and a little too loose-knit in the gussets.

So, I ripped. And ripped. And ripped. It takes surprisingly little time to rip out an entire adult-size lace sock. I wrapped the yarn around the lid of Little Miss’s block box, and then wrapped it again around the back of a chair, tied it in a couple of places, dunked it in the sink, and hung it to dry.

It was when I tried to rewind it into a ball that things went really sour.

I don’t know what happened. I put the hank on my swift and started winding, and I ended up with one ginormous tangle. I spent 4 hours detangling until the yarn snapped. Twice.

At the moment, I have one lovely (properly-sized) Embossed Leaves sock, one sock about 2/3 of the way through the leg and already on the second remnant of yarn, and three more small balls made out of the frogged sock. I am going to have a lot of ends to weave in. K has already renamed this project The Sock of a Thousand Tears.

But I love this pattern, and I love this yarn, and I am going to finish this pair of socks.

I mean, look at this:

Embossed Leaf Sock v1.5

How could I not give it a mate?