Tuesday 26 April 2011

Easter Bonnets

There is an old Irving Berlin song about the Easter bonnets his sweetheart will wear to the Easter parade.  Well I am not a hat person, but come Sunday morning, I had a pair of Easter socks.

They look a little like brightly coloured Easter eggs don't they? 

The April socks had a wee bit different heel.  I did a basic toe up gussetted heel from Maia Spins, but rather than doing a modern heel turn, the heel turn was square and straight.  Without taking that stitch after you knit across the gap, a square heel shape rather than the usual triangular heel cup is made.  By working across all the heel stitches to form the heel flap, in concert with this deep squarish heel turn, you get that nice straight edge a little farther up the side of your heel and  in this case, a very short gusset for a more old fashioned look.  Had I knit the foot just a bit shorter and the flap a bit longer, I wouldn't have had any gusset stitches.     

Which means that I had a bit of April left, so I started on my May socks.  I wasn't sure what I was going to do, but I choose a nice rich red from the basket, Lana Grossa Meilienweit Cotton, which has a wee bit of stretch to it besides the cotton, wool and nylon.  
I may have to rip this one back a bit.  I'm attempting Cat Bordhi's Upstream architecture and I don't think I knit the toe section long enough.  I have enough stitches around the circumference of my foot, but no way is the beastie long enough actually fit my foot if I were to start the heel turn now.  Good thing I have the few extra days in April to play with it.  

About the yarn.  Up to now, I have not been a really big fan of elastic in my cotton socks yarns.  I am certain that this dislike came from working with Patons Cotton Stretch.  It isn't that Stretch is a bad yarn, it is just that the colour was so mind numbingly putrid, I could not complete the pair. 

This rich saturated red is fantastic.  It made me buy this yarn in spite of my bias about stretchy cottons.  And the red is colouring my working with it.  I am having a fantastic time.  You can tell just how good of a time I am having by how much of this sock I did yesterday and you will understand it even more if I tell you I already ripped back to the toe once because I did not like the way my increases looked and then reknit the whole shebang and more.  

Nice yarn.  Funky thinking.  Interesting and a lot of fun while I wait for the snow to melt.   

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