So I was happily knitting along on the Anklets For Meeeee! last weekend after posting that very promising foot-halfway-done photo on the blog… heck, I even finished the first sock! I knit the entire heel plus most of the cuff during the ride to and from my SIL’s house last Sunday (3 hrs round trip). I finished it up at home and tried it on… whoops. Strange, it seems like there’s too much fabric around the front of the ankle and the back barely stays up on my heel. Wow, it’s actually lower in the back… that’s even weirder. What the heck did I do wrong here? DING. What I did wrong was divide the instep and sole stitches unevenly, and continued that up through the heel. In order to get the pattern to work out the way I wanted it to on the instep, I had 44 stitches over the instep and 32 stitches around the sole (and the heel). More stitches = more fabric. Less stitches = less fabric. Thus, baggy in the front and droopy in the back. Also, I thought the finished sock felt a little too loose overall, and I made it too long (due to the elastic in this yarn — Paton’s Stretch Socks — you can get away with making a tighter sock).
The other bummer after the first sock was finished came when I weighed the remaining yarn — my first sock used up just a bit more than half the ball (a bit meaning a few grams).
So I went back to the drawing board on Monday and figured out how to arrange the stitch pattern so I’d have an equal number on instep and sole (and heel), and still fit in the ribbing in a way I liked, while using fewer total stitches around the whole foot to snug it up a little more. So I cast on for the promising second sock on Tuesday night. I was hoping that having fewer total stitches and knitting the foot a little shorter would allow me to get a whole sock out of the remainder of the yarn. Unfortunately, that was not the case (as I discovered just before midnight on Friday night). I had to finish off the cuff with some of the yarn from the first sock.
So now the second sock — the new “first” sock — is finished and it weighs exactly 25 grams. Which would lead you to believe I can certainly get another sock out of the other half of a 50-gram ball of yarn. However, the ball of yarn actually weighed 49 grams before I started. I’m determined to get a full pair of anklets out of this one ball of yarn. Fortunately, the fit (lengthwise) is still a tad loose, so I’m going to knit a shorter foot (1 or 2 pattern repeats shorter, which comes out to about .5″ to 1″ shorter).
Someone with feet smaller than US ladies size 9 who prefers a snug sock could most likely get a pair of anklets out of one ball of this stuff, depending on the pattern used. For my size 9 feet, however, it will be a challenge… but I think it can be done.
In other news… Sock Wars has ended. The winner has been drawn. I’m still waiting to receive a finished pair of socks (and I think there may be some confusion as to who my final assassin was). But I’m not too concerned at this point (actually, I don’t think I’ll ever be “concerned” — they’re just socks, after all!). Meanwhile, I have the second anklet to finish and it’s time to dive right into Summer of Socks!
