Tuesday, June 7, 2011

FO: Skew

Rather than bore you guys to death with a story about the astounding incompetence of the people repairing our condo (don't worry, I'll bore you with that another day. A day when I'm less consumed with rage.), I'm going to jump right into a good old-fashioned FO post.

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Pattern: Skew, Lana Holden, Knitty winter 2009
Yarn: Cherry Tree Hill Supersock Select, in African Gray
Needles: Addi turbos, size 1.5 (maybe. Somewhere between 1 and 2, anyway)
Rav project page

I originally thought these were going to be an insane challenge, especially since I was determined to knit them in less than a month, but honestly, if you can increase and decrease, you can knit these socks. That's really all there is to it--the construction is genius, but you don't have to be Elizabeth Zimmerman to tackle these, there's nothing complicated about the stitches themselves. The key is, clear your mind of everything you know about sock knitting.

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Well, actually, you should probably hang onto your preferred cast-on method for toe up socks. These are knit from the toe up, with increases and decreases placed so that the one side is much longer, causing the yarn colors to skew. The two sides are kitchenered at the heel and then the leg of the sock is again knit with mismatched increases, and finally evened out with short rows.

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The only modification I made was to knit standard M1R and M1L increases, rather than knitting into the stitch 2 rows below, which always gives me trouble.

I love the colorway I used for these. I don't usually buy super-variegated yarns because I don't like the way the color changes obscure stitch patterns. But this skein just spoke to me, so I grabbed it and figured I'd find a use for it later. Finally, arbitrary yarn selection actually works out in my favor!
These almost make me wish for cool weather so I could start wearing them. But alas, tomorrow's forecast high is 97.

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2 comments :

Clumsy Knitter said...

The socks look great! You're right--that is a great colorway for them. Also, feel free to post a rant any time. I don't know why, but I always tend to feel vicarious rage when I hear other peoples' stories--plus it's just nice to know that crappy things happen to others, too!

Arella said...

Nice blog and nice knits!