Waving Lace Socks

They're done!

I love these socks.



Eye of Partridge heel, with stitches picked up "the pretty way" (oops, blurry photo, sorry):



Hooray for this great pattern!



Notes:

Waving Lace Socks, from "Favorite Socks"
Fleece Artist Merino yarn, "Marine" colorway. This is a very pretty combination of mostly blue, with purple and green (which don't really show in the pix but give it a rich tone).
Knitpicks #1 circs, Magic Loop-style
Eye of Partridge heel, stitches picked up "the pretty way" (thanks, Grumperina!)
"Rescue yarnovers" (thanks, June)!
Toe -- I did NOT go down to 6 stitches per needle before grafting, since that results in elf toes, but to 10 stitches per needle, and per Cat Bordhi, I lift each end stitch over the next stitch on the needle as I go.

These are the socks that Lorri saw me knitting and that inspired her to ask for socks. But for Lorri, I plan to make the Embossed Leaves socks in a nice green variegated colorway. I can't wait!

Would you, could you, in a box?

Here, scrunched up on the scanner bed as if jammed in an invisible box like a mime, is my nearly-done first Waving Lace Sock:



It looks much better on, and I don't think it looks half bad here. I love this sock. This is going to be the best-looking sock I have made yet, if I do say so myself.

Last week was Crazy Week at our house, but I didn't read the memo announcing that until late the week before. I looked at my calendar -- meetings or school concert every night, followed by a weekend of camping with the Girl Scouts. Yikes!

Well, we got through it all just fine and while there's still some clean-up yet to do from the camping trip, everything went great.

I nearly had to cancel this camping trip. Four girls were going, and the parents of the other 3 girls (and my DH) all had obligations that prevented them from coming. I needed another adult to go. Not just because this is the GS safety rule and generally a good idea -- but I couldn't even get the girls and our stuff there by myself, even in our SUV. There's just a leetle too much stuff involved in cooking and camping the GS way, sometimes.

We were rescued at the last moment by the leader of another Troop. Her girls are older and don't like to camp so much any more. She misses it. She was happy to come along. Yay, Lorri!

Lorri saw me knitting this sock while we were there and admired it greatly. She even offered to pay me to knit her socks like this. I was very flattered, but politely declined -- that would take all of the fun out of it, I said.

Later I thought through the math -- thanks to the Sock-in-a-Day Challenge, I now know that it take me about 13 hours to knit a single sock. That would make 26 hours for a pair, since I know for a fact that Lorri has the full complement of two feet. Let's say, just for grins, that I would knit these socks for $10 an hour. (Let's not drag my day job and what that pays into this, that doesn't really have much bearing.) The yarn cost about $20. Let's see, $20 for materials, plus $10 an hour times 26 hours = $280. What?!! No one in their right mind would pay that for a pair of socks! Not, I have to say, even for socks as beauteous as these are going to be.

Would you knit socks for pay? And if you would, how much would you charge? What about sweaters? Hats? Scarves? Face it, any of these things we knit can be bought for less than we make them for (if we disregard their unique character and craftsmanship for a moment), and when you cay buy socks for a few dollars or less, why would anyone pay hundreds?

On the other hand, Lorri did save this trip in a very real sense. And I think the time may well come when I would happily knit her a pair of socks as a gift. Because that is a different matter entirely. Don't you think?

Waving Lace Sock

After the fiasco and general PIA that I experienced with the 2x2 tubular bind-off, I was not ready for anything too tricky or new, but I needed to cast on for a new sock right away. I felt as if I would go through withdrawal if I did not get another sock on the needles immediately, one that I would actually be able to knit steadily on.

So I took the Fleece Artist yarn I bought at Stitches West and immediately cast on for this:



This is the start of Waving Lace Socks from "Favorite Socks".

I love the colors of this yarn. Love them! Even the green. My famous aversion to green is tempered by the blues and purples. Green, especially the dark emerald green, is just fine for me in small doses next to blue and purple, apparently.

Now, the very astute will notice that this sock starts with a 1x1 rib, but no tubular cast-on is apparent. Wouldn't this have been the perfect opportunity to learn tubular cast-on?

Yes, and no. Yes, I want to learn to do that some day. And no, I think that if I, in my battered mental state as a result of my epic struggle with 2x2 tubular bind-off, had attempted to do that, my head would have exploded.