Tuesday 10 February 2009

And Almost End and a Beginning

I've been playing this morning. This is the bag that I am using as gauge, and practise for the vest which will follow immediately. I'll use it to practise patterns and get gauge between the stranded areas and unstranded parts of the bag, and well, just for fun.

I can already see that a change of colour is in order. If I want to provide some pop to the black, I'll have to change the grey at the centre of the blue blue squares, for something much more brilliant, much more in tune with the power of the lovely blue. It looks OK, but with a brilliant poppy orange yellow it might just look stunning. My trip around town today is going to have to include more yarn.

While I am there I might just see if I can find a soft grey so I can alternate the background colour. I have the light grey and if I have a shade between the strong black and the light, I should be able to use them for the soft traditional variations of many Fair Isle designs. That might mean I ought to vary the blue as well, but we shall see what I can come up with.

And joy of joys, I have finished the black socks but for the heels. I'll be working on black socks heels this evening, and plan to have the blessed things complete before this day is done.

It could be said I cheated but I prefer to think of it as being thrifty with my time. I had a good toe section, well mid foot and toe actually, and I had a good top section. I reknit from the top down long enough so that when I grafted the toe section to the sock, it matched the length of the completed black sock perfectly.

Yup, I grafted an entire foot. It turned out well enough I think, though not perfectly. If the wearer feels the imperfections too much, then I will undo the graft and simply knit the darn toe. It would take at least a day, so I'm crossing my fingers and hoping.

And were it any other colour than black, I would have pictures. Many pictures. A plethora of pictures, cause I am really really proud of all this grafting.

And I am never ever knitting plain black socks again. Kettle dyed black perhaps, overdyed black, surely, multi black and grey tones, certainly, but never plain black again.

It's a promise I mean to keep.