As I was just rounding 3" of the cuff after finishing a toe after figuring out a heel turn I'd never done before (having to knit back about 3 times in order to get it right) I decided that I wasn't enamoured with this sock. It's not the pattern, per se. It's more that my stitch count is such that the pattern repeats aren't working out the 100% best and I don't think the pattern is coming through the way I want it to. It's working, but it's not working like the socks in the pattern photo and that's making me love them less. Ordinarily I might not care, but this yarn is special to me and I want to be sure I absolutely adore the socks,
A few months ago (November) I was visiting my parents on holiday and stopped by their LYS to browse around. There, I picked up a few skeins of yarn by a local dyer (that I think you might only be able to get in that store and perhaps over the web). All of them are named after places in the region or things inspired by the region and I absolutely loved them. The sock yarn skeins I picked out were 80% BFL/20% Nylon and I chose the "Prairie Grass" and "Jack Pine" colourways both because they were gorgeous and because I'm an ecologist and prairies and jack pines have both been very important over the course of my career.
Fast forward to January. One of the videocasts I listen to, Knerd Girl Knits, is running a year-long Women in STEM KAL extravaganza and the Jan/Feb theme is Women in Science. At first, I thought to myself that I would just knit some vanilla socks out of the Lorna's Laces Solemate I have in my stash in honour of my NASA Jet Propulsion Lab acquaintance, Bridget Landry, but really she's more of an engineer, and the engineer theme doesn't come up until summer. So I put that on hold and tried to think of a new project. As I scanned my stash and my pattern queue, it dawned on me...I would knit the "Prairie Grass" yarn in honour of ME. I am a woman in science and prairies are very important to the work that I do. So I pulled out the Prairie Grass yarn and balled it up. At first I was just going to knit the next vanilla sock pattern from my Wendy Johnson "Socks From the Toe Up" book since I'm still learning how to actually knit socks, but that didn't seem like a good use of the yarn. So I skipped forward a bit in the book and came to the "Butterfly Socks" pattern. Perfect! Prairies and butterflies, two things I absolutely love and think about on a regular basis in my work.
I began swatching for the socks right away...around the middle of January, shortly after I finished my Tauriel, but then the Downton Abbey swap came along and I wanted to make sure I got the knitting for that done, so I finished my swatch and put it on hold until I was done, figuring I could easily finish a pair of socks in a month. I've done it before, and the fact that I finished the entire foot of one in a weekend is a pretty good indicator that I could finish these in the month as well.
Here's a photo of where the first sock was as of last night:
As you can see, it's a nice sock, and I'm a good ways in. Problem...it' doesn't scream "butterflies" to me.
The hangup, I think, is that with my stitch gauge and my foot circumference, I have to cast on fewer than the smallest number of stitches in the pattern. Which is okay, but the lace pattern is 10 stitches wide and the small size calls for 64 stitches (32 on each side) which means you are supposed to do 3 pattern repeats and then 2 pattern repeats on the top and the same on the back of the cuff. Because I only have 58 stitches, I have to do 2 repeats and then 1 and it ends up looking more like a diamond pattern with a lot of stockinette on the sides than a continuous butterfly repeat pattern. It didn't bother me when I was just knitting the stitch pattern on the top of the foot, but once I started knitting around the cuff it started to bug me. Just today I rounded 3" of cuff and I held it up and just thought...I don't love this.
My mind started wandering, and even though I have a very different (also on a deadline...this one by the end of March and VERY IMPORTANT) sock pattern coming up so I won't be getting to them for a while, I started wondering what I would do with the jack pine colourway. I recently purchased the "Enchanted Knits" book and found myself wondering if there was an appropriately "foresty" pattern in it (there is). This then led me to picking up the "Knitting Knee-Highs" book I purchased and flip through it to see if *it* contained any forest-esque patterns. It doesn't really, but it does contain a pattern called "Flutterby". They are not lace. They are knee highs. They have an entirely different stitch gauge. But I love them and they are prairie-esque (a butterfly stitch motif panel inside a bunch of arrowhead pattern panels that the designer calls "old shale" but kinda looks like vast tracts of grass). I've also found a pattern on Ravelry that is just a butterfly stitch motif that I love, but this one is in my library and already paid for (and I told myself I needed to knit more from my library). Plus, the reason I bought the knitting knee-highs book is (well...it's that I ADORE knee-highs and almost always knit tall socks anyway) that the next project I need to do is toe-up knee highs. I've done the toe up thing 2 (and whatever I worked on this) times now, but I do need to learn the knee high formula (even though it's top down in this pattern). Plus, when I was a kid (okay, lbr, well into my 20's and still occasionally) I referred to butterflies as flutterbys (in strictly non-professional settings only) so it's kinda meant to be, right?
So....what I'm saying is...even though I'm needing to have these done by the end of February, and February is a short month, and I have less knitting time than usual because of a huge pro-bono print design project I need to have completed by the end of the month.....I think I'm going to rip these out and knit the other pattern. I wish I felt like I could spend a few days considering it, but if it's to be done then I must do it now while I've got today/tonight to swatch and a half day off tomorrow after a dyeing workshop and a weekend to try to get a good start in. I've got a conference from Feb 16 - 18 that will require plane travel and about 6 total hours in Chicago O'Hare, so I'm hoping I can make good headway during that and get the socks done. Even though they are knee highs and I probably only have 3 weeks once all the swatching is done.
And a swap to finish.
And another swap to start.
And other knee highs to re-knit.
Wish me luck, friends.
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