Skip to main content

Frakking socks - Episode VI - The Finale

Is this where we all go camping?

Sorry, BSG reference for those of you who haven't seen it.

Here are the finished socks:

Frakking socks

Modifications:


  • Knit on 2.25mm needles

  • Cast on 68 stitches, by accident but it worked out OK

  • Increased to 70, removing some of the purl stitches from the ribbing to accommodate my skinny feet. 

  • Only knit one pattern repeat on the cuff as I have short legs, ended on row 2 before starting heel. 

  • Adapted the toe pattern to create a V of ribbing when starting the toe.


Things I learnt:


  • I don't need to dither so much. I understand sock construction and can make stuff up as I go.

  • I can do tricky cables without a cable needle if I pause for a few minutes and think about where the stitches need to go. 

  • Changing the type of needle I use cuts down on wrist and finger strain. I used a mix of Addi circulars and bamboo DPNs. I find metal a bit slippery for cables so drop my stitches more than I do with wood or bamboo but find metal faster for stocking stitch. 

  • When your parents suggest the stitch pattern would make a lovely jumper, especially one knit in sock yarn, know that they are joking.
Viper Pilots is a great, well written pattern, though it is fiddly and maybe not best suited to a three and a half day sock challenge. Unless you are frakking stupid. :D

My next socks will be plain old stocking stitch socks.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Congratulation! I can't believe you knit those in three and a half days, and still had time for sightseeing. Am very impressed.
Ginger Knits said…
It wasn't quite 3.5 days, more like 4, which makes all the difference. :D

Popular posts from this blog

Food: easy five spice soda bread

In that idle time between Christmas and New Year some have dubbed Twixmas, I found myself recuperating from spending a week with my very intense mother-in-law by watching mid-morning TV. I flicked over to Nadiya's British Food Adventure  where this recipe for red split lentils and five-spice soda bread caught my eye. I'm a big fan of curry; it's my favourite cuisine and the combo of lentil soup and soda bread ticked the right boxes. My dad is a keen breadmaker and he talked about making soda bread over Christmas which had tickled my interest. While I like the idea of making bread, I'm unlikely to have bread flour or yeast in and I find the kneading and proving off putting, but soda bread is doable. The lentil soup was eaten before I thought of photographing it. It's similar to dhals we routinely make for dinner - so cheap and easy to do - though the garlic and butter were a treat. The bread has lasted for a few days as there are only two of us in the house...

Lashing and lashings...

As well as talk of Clementine Cake on twitter there has been talk of brewing Ginger Beer. Ginger beer is my drink of choice and I'm always in search of a good one. I find many commercial ones too sweet. Once on holiday in Brasil I had a ginger beer made with freshly squeezed ginger which is the gold standard at the moment and a tough act to live up to. @eskimimi (who has a lovely blog ) linked to this River Cottage recipe last week . I had to hunt around for brewers yeast as the brewer's yeast you can buy in chemists and health food shops is deactivated so won't work for brewing, despite the name. (trade descriptions act anyone?). I ended up buying my yeast online after consulting my brewing guru Bioniclaura . As well as knitting Laura brews her own beer, which I got sample when I stayed with her and her lovely dog and husband in Dublin when I went over at the end of October. More on that later. I couldn't wait to get started but had to wait til we returned from Hasti...

Just beet it - part II

Here it is. The beetroot dye experiment results. I had read that beetroot turns a disappointing orange colour when the dye is set. The most saturated end turned a beautiful burnished orange however the far end of the skein, which had been a delicate shade of pale pink before cooking was a mucky yellow. The cream/mucky yellow colour dominated the skein and wasn't as graduated as I'd hoped for. I decided to redye the cream section, leaving a small section of the Naples Yellow (mucky yellow) for contrast (I actually like the colour in small amounts and looked up a nicer name in my Artists Colour Manual). I added a few drops of pink food colouring to the beetroot vinegar just to see what happened and over dyed the mid portion of orange with more beetroot vinegar with a few drops of red food colouring. This is how it looked while drying... ...ta dah ! Here it is reskeined . Well half the skein anyway. I was in a rush as I wanted to enter it in a dip dyeing competition on Ravelry w...