Tour de Sock Round 3

After having so much trouble with the last pair from the competition I was slightly worried about the third pattern coming out. I loved this one! The pattern is Indecisions and it was really enjoyable to knit, lacier than I usually choose to knit my socks but they'll look great with my wardrobe.

The yarn is my hand-dyed, originally intended for my marled fade but was kind of a failed dye job. I was looking for more of a light tan color with the speckles, obviously my over dye was too dark and I came out with more of a brown than tan.  Once I saw the pattern I knew this yarn would work great, it would show off the pattern while also showing off the yarn!

The pattern was really simple to follow and there were written instructions for the leg! Yes! The foot was charted but I was easily able to work with that. I first tried to cable these without a cable needle and didn't enjoy it at all so I just whipped out my cable needle and went to town.

This is the third pattern out of six, I'll have a post up later this week with the the fourth pattern!

Tour de Sock Round 2

Unfortunately this round was kind of a failure. There is an air of mystery surrounding the challenge because we (as the knitters) have no idea what the pattern is going to look like. We get an estimated yardage count and how many extras we have to have and then it's a waiting game until it's released.

Our mystery this stage was these amazing colorwork socks Kanteletar! Here's the down-low, I am not a color work knitter nor am I a chart knitter. Written instructions just work so much better for my brain function, but compete I did. Until I realized that I missed repeating a chart...in the cuff.

I was going to complete the sock in our allotted nine days, until I measured the sock against its mate to see if I could start the foot chart and realized the leg was short. I ripped back half the freakin sock!

So I've committed to working on the colorwork sock when I complete each stage early so that they will be done by the end of the competition. If I don't do this I'm not sure that they will get completed, but I really want some new Christmas socks! We got round 4 Monday night so I've been knitting my fingers off! Also, look at the cute new bag I made!

Tour de Sock Round 1

"We have to continue to stretch our brains" Sue Stokes from Legacy Knitz Podcast. These socks fit the bill. I'm competing in Tour-de-Sock for the rest of the summer and they are going to make my knitting brain work.

This sock had an afterthought leg. I have never in my knitting career heard of an afterthought leg, but I have now managed to knit a pair in five days. Tour-de-sock is a sock knitting competition that runs in conjunction with Tour-de-France (bike race) and is a challenge race. Each pair of socks (six of them) is going to be complicated and contain skills that most people don't use in their everyday knitting.

These weren't really complicated to knit but the construction made me actually look at the sock differently. Essentially the sock was knit from the toe up, insert waste yarn, knit the heel. So I ended up with a sock that didn't have any foot opening. As shown in the photo above I wove my 9inch circs on each side of the waste yarn and then took it out. At a couple of different stages we had to take photos as proof that we completed the pattern the way it was written. I'm am really excited to see what the next pattern is going to look like! I'll keep you updated, it's coming out on the 25th!