Sunday, August 26, 2007

Stripey Socks


The Vesper Socks are complete! I just put my head down and went to it.


Nice heels eh?


Matchy matchy!



Pattern: Vanilla Sock from Knitting Rules - 72 stitches
Yarn: Vesper Sock Yarn, 80% Superwash Wool 20% Nylon, Knit and Tonic Colorway
Needles: 2.0mm, size 0

I did not love the yarn base. It gave me all kinds of trouble. I've heard it mentioned as "sooo soft". I did not find this to be the case. It was a little scratchy. After all the trials on the heel I was getting really irritated with it because it was so hard to pick stitches back up as the yarn would split in a really fuzzy way. (I should mention I get eczema outbreaks on my hands, so I'm a little extra sensitive. And I happen to be having one right now.)

Love the stripes and they turned out really well even if I did have to weave in 10 billion ends in the heel flaps! Thank you Miss T! A mighty sweet birthday gift indeed!

After this experience I decided to trade away the other Vesper I had in my stash. Between my need to control the stripes and the scratchy base yarn I just didn't really want to do it again. I got this in trade. (on Ravelry of course!) Medium weight Socks that Rock in Fairgrounds! Yay! It was oh so fitting when the mail person brought the STR just as I was closing up the toe on the Vesper Sock. It's so soft and spun nice and tight. Yummy. A nice treat for my hands.

Since I've seen a lot of shorter cuffs on STR socks I decided this was a good time to dive into a toe-up. I sat amongst several toe up patterns and through trial and error... (ie this cast on worked for me) I landed on the On Your Toes Socks by Ann Budd from the Summer Interweave 2007. I had to manipulate the numbers to get the shape for the toe I wanted, but I think it's going to work out fairly well. After the short row heel trials of the Vesper socks, I am going to sub a heel flap. I have a couple of Wendy's toe up patterns and I'm going to try to sub in one of those flap/gusset heels. (Take a peek at her new Loopy's Laces sock pattern. It's gorgeous!)

So I'm off to a hectic shopping day. Every two weeks... time to stock up! Happy Knitting!


7 comments:

Pam the Yarn Goddess said...

I just had to leave a comment to tell you what a fantastic job you did on those socks! They're perfectly matched, your knitting is impeccable, and they're a real pleasure to look at. I know you'll enjoy them for years to come. Great job!

Dave said...

The socks came out beautifully, even though they were a nuisance to knit. Did you actually cut out all the other colours in the heel flap? Wow.

Sarah said...

For the record (and bearing in mind that this comment is coming from someone who is a bit anal about stripes matching), I am VERY impressed with your stripes and heels matching so perfectly!

Meghann said...

Those look great! Good job!

Sue_hp said...

Nice socks!!

Jess when you have a sec, can you come over to the soakerstosocks group and help us rewrite patterns? Thanks!!

Anonymous said...

Beautiful socks!!

Beth said...

Just wanted to let you know we seem to have a lot in common. First of all, I totally don't dig the Vesper base yarn. It's scratchy, thin and doesn't have good memory. I don't dig the dye job either. I found it to be rather dull and full of white splotches. I got rid of the rest of my Vesper after knitting my socks.

Second, we both seem to be on the lookout for a good toe up heel. I followed the direction on one of Wendy's patterns recently and really like it much more than any other toe up heel I've ever tried. I didn't need to rip it back even once and there was no swearing involved!

BTW, your socks are really, really lovely.