Falling Water Socks

Apparently I'm in love with Stansfield 196.

On my recent vacation, I knit a sock using the chart for that pattern from "More Sensational Knitted Socks". It's a very pretty pattern, easily done and easily memorized. There is no cabling, just simple increases and decreases.



And here it is, in Trekking XXL, color "77". Love the color name, don't you?

It's for someone with feet a bit smaller than mine, hence the petite leg on this sock.

I kept thinking it looked familiar. I had long wanted to knit the River Rapids Socks, a free pattern by Sockbug, but hadn't gotten around to it. (BTW, that's a link to the main site and not the pattern itself since I don't like to link to PDF's, it causes havoc with my browser when I click on a link to a PDF, and yet, do I ever learn?).

Guess what? Sockbug's pattern uses the exact same chart.

Anyway, I took a scarf project along for travel knitting, also. It's the Falling Water scarf, free on this blog. My friend Lisa saw me musing about it on my blog, knit it, entered it in the Minnesota State Fair, and won a ribbon and a small (very small) cash prize to boot. I would demand a finder's fee for having the idea, if not for the fact that Lisa just put up with me put me up, along with DD, for a week. And the fact that the cash prize is (ahem) $2, or so she tells me.



Here's the wonky, unblocked beginning of my version.

Isn't that a lovely stitch pattern? I started mine on the plane home using the lovely purple wool / tencel sock yarn I got at Stitches West, and it's partly done (haven't decided exactly how long to make it yet), and -- wait just a gol-dern minute!

You guessed it! Stansfield 196 strikes yet again. Imagine my surprise on the plane home to unfold the scarf pattern I had printed out so long ago and look at the chart, only to immediately put it away again, having memorized that chart a short way down the leg of the sock.

Now, a question for you all -- is Trekking thinner than other sock yarn? I don't notice that the yardage is significantly more than other sock yarns, at least per the label, but on the first plane ride, after grafting the second toe on the Sunday Socks, I accidentally cast on one entire extra pattern repeat on the cuff of this sock.

And didn't notice it until I had knit the entire leg and heel flap and was ready to pick up the gusset stitches. Because apparently I am even more of a moron than I had previously thought possible. But somehow the sock is the right size, and I measured my gauge at about 10 freakin' spi, which is the only way I could be such a maroon and still have the sock come out the right size.

The knitting goddess was smiling on me when I knit this sock, that's for sure. I just hope she smiles on me again when I go to knit sock #2, because I have taken what notes I can and set it aside for now, being completely captivated by Cat Bordhi's new book.

I'm off to the ball game tonight with Coriolis sock in hand, hopefully I will put up a pic over the weekend.