Ravelry and socks.

Am I sad? I`ve been checking my position on the Ravelry waiting list every day. Today??

You signed up on June 21, 2007
You are #10468 on the list.
184 people are ahead of you in line.
18414 people are behind you in line.
35% of the list has been invited so far

(And just to prove I`m really sad, I`ve organised my sock stash and started taking pix of it. I`ve opened a Flickr account as well.......so I`m ready to go to the Ravelry ball!)

Socks. Umm. I finished the Purple Iris socks. I used the plain vanilla sock pattern from the Violet Green Sock Pattern Generator, which is a greatly useful little site. (Nice yarns too.)I`m knitting them in Lorna`s Laces Shepherd Sock, two skeins of 215 yards each.

Except...when I`d finished the first sock, there still seemed to be a lot left of the first ball. So out of interest I weighed the sock and the remains of the ball. Sock weighed 33 grams, 25 grams left. Um. I weighed the second ball. 58g.
Now this was nice...obviously, the yardage is crucial to LLs, not weight. I approve. And admittedly The VG pattern is not a long leg one...the leg measures 6" to the start of the heel shaping.
So I used the 25g remainder of the first ball plus (I checked) 8g of the other. I weighed the socks and they weighed 33g each, unsurprisingly, given that the sizes matched.

Thus...I used 66g out of 116g, and I`ve got 50g left over. I find this annoying. 50g is most (not all!) of another pair of socks. Shepherd Sock yarn is expensive here..£6.50 plus postage per skein. This is not left-overs...this is wastage. As in wasted money. I like the colour, but not enough to knit another pair anytime soon.

Incidentally, that 8g I used from the second ball translated into 25 rows of 60 stitches, plus 18 rows of toe shaping and cast off. What does all this mean? It means that if I`m mean, then I sould be able to knit myself a pair of socks out of one skein of LL`s Shepherd Sock, no? 29g per sock. I`m short 4g per sock on this pattern, ie 13 rows of 60 stitches each plus half of the toe shaping. (Check me here if I`m wrong...it`s late in Scotland as I write this!)I could make shorter socks, or I could put in a contrast heel/toe/cuff. Goody.....

(Or I could work it all out in yards, but another day, okay???)


Finally, you may have noticed that I said I had finished the Purple Iris socks? Sometimes I amaze even myself. I had decided that finishing them by the end of the month was my goal, and here I am with four days to spare. So I can start a new pair now, yup? September Socks, but four days early. So what to make?

Okay, I looked at Monkey as Yvette suggested, but somehow they didn`t ring my bell. Nice socks but.....anyway, I kept looking around the other Knitty socks and I decided on these, Falling Leaves.

Why? Well, the pattern includes several elements that I haven`t tried before...crochet cast on, toe-up construction, a short row heel AND they`re in lace. And I liked the name of the pattern of course. I`m not quite brave enough to try them in a varigated yarn though...I want to be able to see where I`m going wrong. The only plain yarn I had in stash was a ball of Opal Uni in a very bright pink however, so ...pink leaves it is.

I`ve cast on (urgh, I`m not good at crochet, my preciousesss...) and got up to...well, not quite sure where, but I`m sure it will all make perfect sense soon. I`m not gifted with the sort of mind that can visualise a shape from knitting instructions, so I tend to follow patterns with blind faith and count my stitches a lot!