Saturday 27 October 2007

Bumbling along....

sorry about the tacky title of the post but I couldn't resist...


The Bee socks are finally complete *said with a sigh of relief* they have been a nightmare. I've never had as much trouble matching the pattern up on a pair of socks as I did with these, it's a miracle they match at all...


But when you see a photo like this:

you pull the yarn until you see the change of colour cast on and away you knit......

The clue really should have been I didn't seem to be getting big blocks of colour more stripes of colour interspersed with little narrow stripes.... very nice I quite like it and prefer it to the photo advertising it....

The problem is those stripes of colour in my photo aren't made up of a long colour run with a short colour run in-between, so what looks like 3 bands of honey coloured yarn actually is made up of 11 shorter runs of colour with an inch or two of contrast :o( and you've guessed it I actually started the sock somewhere in one of these colour runs rather than right at the beginning of the colour sequence.....

When it came to the 2nd sock I thought I'd got the right place to start, but I had cut the yarn off far too soon, so I had to pull it back and cut a bit more yarn off... it looks like it matches but the cuff is about 2 rows shorter on the 2nd sock than the 1st but the nature of the pattern doesn't make it too noticeable, I hope!

I got to the end of the leg and had made a note were to start the heel shaping at the end of the 2nd white stripe... yeh right! which bit of white is the end of the 2nd stripe.... well I guessed and got halfway through the heel and realised I'd knit the leg too far, so the stripes on the 2nd foot wouldn't have matched the 1st sock, so I pulled it back and re-did the heel... 2nd time lucky as they say.....

By the time I got to the toe shaping I was getting a bit better at this, that and I had resigned myself to the fact I would probably be pulling it back to make it match the 1st sock.... but sigh of relief I did it first time....

So a note to anyone out there who is about to knit this pattern and would like matching socks; pull the yarn off to the start of either the honey, white, milk chocolate or dark chocolate long sequences (ignore the little runs of colour in between those colour sequences) before casting on, it will make your life a lot easier.

I thought messing with the Hundertwasser sock was a problem because of the mis-printed yarn, but it had nothing on this.... what will the next pair of socks bring I wonder???

9 comments:

Melody said...

What wonderful socks.... they match beautifully and the yarn is stunning. In fact, all your work is stunning Ann!
love Debs xx

gilraen said...

They look georgeous! And it is a testament to your fortitude that they look perfect! There are no clues to your 'trials' in those socks :D

Anonymous said...

Great socks! The striping on yours, despite requiring such perseverence to perfect, is much nicer than the pattern shown on the ball band.

Soo said...

Ok - you can't start apologising for punny blog post titles or I'll have to do some major sort of penance for all of mine!!!

The socks look great - personally I think you did it right and when the label designers see your socks they will be trying to figure out where THEY went wrong.

fleegle said...

I cannot believe your tenacity! Being a lazy knitter, I have to admire anyone who has that sort of patience. They are bee-utiful, though!

Hellbelle said...

They're great socks. Very different striping to those in Opal's picture though. I prefer yours!

Viknits said...

I actually think your socks are MUCH nicer than their socks!
I wouldn't bother trying to match them.. i'm too lazy for that! ;)

Knit - R - Done said...

Those are so cute! I can never get self striping yarns to match like that.

Kai said...

I prefer yours to the opal piccie too.. and hats off to your tenacity in getting the stripes to match. I would have given up right at the beginning!