Baby Socks Redux

Okay, I know I promised pictures. And I had pictures. And I had a rather long post which I posted this morning. Except it didn't actually publish. I hit the publish post button and 20 minutes later...nothing. So I had to shut down the computer and come to work. Fucking Blogger.

Anyway, so I'm going to rewrite my post now, without the pictures, and hopefully post pictures tonight or maybe tomorrow.

Baby Socks Stats
Pattern: Better Than Booties Baby Socks, Summer '05 IK, Hugs and Kisses, Chevron Lace and Ruffled Rib
Yarn: One Skein + Lorna's Laces Girly Stripe
Needles: Size 0 dpn

The Lorna's Laces was love to work with and the patterns were extremely well written. I learned a couple new skills and improved on some newer skills. First, I had never done a short row heel and toe before (I always made a heel flap and decreased for toe shaping.) Although the wrapping was a bit fiddly and time consuming at first I found that I like it. It works. However I did screw up on some of the heels and toes, mainly ending up facing the wrong side when done, indicating that I blew by the paired stitches on some of the decrease rows and decreased the wrong stitches. This made some of the heels and toes slightly crooked. But these are baby socks, worked on size 0 dpn's, half in the car. I decided to let them be crooked and not rip back. Perhaps the knitting gods will punish me. Oh wait, they already did. I ran out of yarn on the last toe and it will be at least another 6-8 weeks before my LYS has anymore Girly Stripe in. So, you will most likely be seeing a picture of one perfectly normal Chevron Lace sock and one with a blue/brown/gray toe posted here in the near future. I just can't wait that long to finish that sock. It's driving me crazy sitting in my knitting bag, needles akimbo, poking my new projects. It must be finished!

I also learned to purl through the back loop. That's right. I figured out how to knit through the back loop just by "figuring it out" but could never quite get my head around purling tbl. Then, enter this project where I couldn't really substitute a different stitch (like ssp) or at least I couldnt' figure out how to, and I was forced to find a diagram. Where did I find it? Well, I went to the newbie forum at Knitty and found a link to the Lion Brand How To site. And there it was. Diagrammed for me. For the record, I will only be using this knoweldge if I have to because i find it difficult to pull the yarn through the loops in the manner, but it's nice to know that I can.

Third, the Hugs and Kisses socks allowed me to practice cabling, since they were only my second ever cable project. The one thing I will say about cabling? It sucks if you are a tight knitter like me. The tightness does make for crisp looking cables but its a real bitch to stretch the held stitches over to be knitted. Perhaps I will have to work on making the previous row of stitches looser? I will say that this was less of a problem when I made Sharfik since it was worked flat, making the round before the cables a purl round, which I always work a little more loosely.

Alright, that is all for now. More later, hopefully with pictures.