Father, Brother & Son Socks

I am using this yarn to make "Father and Son" socks from the Fall '06 IK. But I think this yarn wants to be something else. It's too marled to show the pattern details well.

The pattern has chevrons down the front and back, like so:


And cables down the left and right side, like so:


These are terrible pix, but even so I think they show the problem. The contrast between the black and the lavender is too much, and obscures the pattern in a way that I think the marled yarn that I used for BIL's socks might not have.

Maia's post today about the process of designing a sock seemed to call forth my inner knitter, who had this to say: "This yarn and this pattern do not go together! If I make cables, I want them to POP OUT, baby! Stop struggling to convince yourself that these are not terrible, and start over already!" She is such an opinionated witch, sometimes.

Make no mistake, this is a very nice yarn, and a very nice pattern. I just think that each one needs something else that the other cannot give it. Like some couples I know.

And the yarn wants to be knit on a #1 at a slightly tighter gauge (this is knit on a #2).

By striking coincidence, I really love the pattern that Maia used to demonstrate the sock design process in her post today. For a man's sock, however, I think I would substitute one of the "make 1" increases for the YO, to avoid the holes.

However, perhaps the most important thing for me to take away from Maia's lesson is this: if I skip swatching with the justification that a sock is small enough to be a swatch, then I'd darn well better be ready to treat it as a swatch, and start over if I don't like the results.

Good-bye for now, Father and Son Socks.