I was given a lovely skein of cherry tree hill sock yarn that I had been admiring for a long time and I knew just what I wanted to knit with it. A lovely pair of mens cabled socks. I trawled raverly and the rest of the net, flicked through books on my shelves and couldn't find exactly what I wanted. So I decided to be brave and have a go at designing the sock pattern myself. I have knitted a fair few socks so was well aware of sock construction etc. so I set to work. I need to add here that I decided to start these on the plane to Turkey. So wooden DPNs in place I started. I knitted a bit more on the return journey home and then completed my first sock. I weighed the yarn - fantastic 51grms left. This was going to be close but hey I had weights and measures on my side. Well lets say I would have done had I checked the weight of the original skein (there was no ball band or tag). I made the assumption it started off weighing 100grms, how wrong could I be. It was only after turning the heel on sock two that I realised there was a lot less yarn than I was expecting and it wasn't going to knit 24cm (for mister big feet) from the heel and still have slack to knit a toe. Dilema!
First thought was to try and find a skein of matching yarn and buy it to complete the project. Well no one had any matching yarn on the whole of ravelry, nothing on ebay or with the online retailers that I shop with. The whole task was made harder as I didn't even have a colourway or shade number.
So what to do? In the end the only option was a gender change option. My feet are much smaller. I now have a lovely pair of Ladies cable socks in cherry tree hill.
This really was all that was left of the 115grm skein when I had finished so it was a bit of a close call even for my little trotters. There were also some very scary moments when I went to cut the toe of the already finished man sock and started to wind back the yarn and kept pulling off strands not a small yarn ball. All was fine in the end and I did make another modification to my toe pattern to stop that bulking that was in the original man sock.
All that is left to do now is knit up these.......
.......into another pair. This time I know the yarn is Java and I have a dye lot. I also know exactly where I can buy some more but I think 2 skeins will be enough.
5 comments:
Beautiful! Very classy socks. Well done on your first design! :-) (Or is it just your first sock design?)
First fully flegged sock design as I count the ipod socks as my first knitted design. Plus there was my wasp wig hat of course. I am still working on that lacey shrug too with the yarn I bought from Jenny at Fyberspates at the Iknit day in November.
oooh cables.... I love them.... and that shade in CTH is lovely too!
I'm also in the throws of writing a pattern... but most definitely for girls... not boys, a toe up lace leaf pattern with a reverse gusset heel... GULP! I'm very nervous about writing it up, as sometimes the words don't come out of my head right.
If you're ever looking for a test knit swap on designs... I'm always happy to knit myself a pair of boy cable socks if you'd like to knit yourself a pair of lacy leaf ones? Heck, I'd settle for just text knitting the pattern for you... I love cables!
Well done again on your victory on the cable pattern, its fabulous!
Jx
Well they are beautiful, even if gender-confused! I love toe-up socks for just this reason - the worst that can happen is they end up a bit shorter.
Ummm, if only I had started toe up I wouldn't have had a problem and you think I would have learned my lesson from the evolution incident. The good news is I get to knit them all over again. The only thing that needs altering is the length as the cables keep them tight on me but have plenty of give for a man.
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