Tuesday, April 11, 2006

Cedar Creekin' it With the Homies

Posted by Ssssssssssssssssssssssssssss



3/5ths of the WeHeartYarn contingent are happily entrenched in the STR sock club madness. As we all saw a few days ago, the talented NeuroKnitter has completed her pair, and WoolGirl has one-down, one-to-go, amazing everyone with her picture-perfect stripes. (so perfect, in fact, that a new word was coined on the KAL-blog to capture the elation felt when looking at WG’s sock: STRIPERFECTION. needless to say, she confided that she is a bit apprehensive about her second – doesn’t want to disappoint her fans, you know).

I, too, have finally begun the actual patterning, and stripes are occurring. I wouldn’t say there is any real striperfection on my addis, but they are a bit striperific, if I do say so myself. (these are very different things).

Knitting has been taking a back seat to life lately, which means I have 3 pairs of socks on the needles in various states of not-being-done-ness, and have not really knitted much for what seems like eons. One pair are little toes with a bit of foot, and two pair now have heels and are slowly growing legs. I often think to myself: “self, you should cast on a whole mess of toes because that is sometimes the hardest and least-fun part of knitting, the casting on (although, sometimes we feel antsy and restless, and casting on is the easiest part – go figure), so just do it – get yourself a bunch of toes cast on, then you can do what you want, any-how you want, with any of a number of socks, whenever you want.” Well, I have realized that that is crazy talk – my anxiety levels just grow when I have a bunch of toes cast on, because I accidentally (there’s that word again) set myself goals, which I am really trying to get away from.

Anyway, this past weekend contained knitting. Most notably, it contained a serious bitch-slapping of my checkbook due to a Blue Moon Fiber Arts sale at a local yarnshop, but I don't really want to discuss that right now. That is the kind of thing best thought about in the privacy of one's own head, wondering what on earth possessed a certain engaged-knit-blogger to throw every single piece of caution she has been saving up for the past year to the wind, and go crazy, absolutely insane, with not one ounce of logic intervening at all, at said sale.

Whew.

Back to the weekend's knitting-related components: I turned the heels on my Cedar Creeks, and - oh, Kaci, OH, KACI, I love this pattern. It is deceptively quick and memorizable, and stretchy, and shimmery, in a way, and the pattern is at once easy and interesting, and really quite beautiful. I did my own personal modifications, meaning toe-up, two at once, with a short-row heel, and I am IN LOVE with the yarn, not only because it is green, but because of that shimmery-ness.

Okay, enough of this gabbing. Without further ado, I present:

MY SOCKS!!

The top of the page shows where I was when I started the weekend - a big mess o' socks, each vying for my attention, pushing each other out of the way, each one wanting desperately to be the one settling in with me for a nice long Friday night of knitting, by myself, no fiancee, no sister, no roommates, no one but the socks, me and the boys of Ocean's 12.

Guess who won?


Close-ups of the contenders:


STR Rainforest Jasper, Cedar Creek pattern

STR Marbles, Jaywalker pattern


STR Cobalt Bloom, Yarn Over Cable stitch pattern

It was a difficult decision, to be sure, but I really feel that the best sock won.

This time.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Even though I came up with "striperfection", for some reason whenever I see the word I want to say "stripperfection"... which gives an entirely different conotation.

Love the pattern on the Cobalt Bloom.

Anonymous said...

Lovin' all the socks here, especially that CC pattern. I wasn't so much loving the Jaywalker pattern with the Marbles yarn, myself. I tried and tried and tried and tried(!) but eventally ripped it out completely and did my very plain, standard ribbed sock, but I'm not entirely happy with that either. (Story to come soon on the blog. I'm not sure if I'm ready to face it yet. It's still a bit too painful.)

Wool Girl said...

Your CC socks are sisters to mine - love them! And your bloom socks are fantasticly beautiful!

j

Stacey said...

I love that yarnover cable pattern! Did it come from a pattern book?

shannon said...

Oh, Siri - Jaywalkers are known to cause a great deal of woe for some - three of the four here at WeHeartYarn had muchas problemas with them. With the help of NK, I modified the pattern to include less stitches (60 - 64 around total) which definitely helped. I think the main thing about this pattern is the confluence of foot size/shape, and gauge, and, luckily, mine seemed to work.

Stacey, the pattern is the Yarn Over Cable pattern from Sensational Knitted Socks - it's a 4-row repeat that is easily memorized.

thanks, all ya'll for the comments

s

Lauren said...

I love all of them! I'm just trying to finish up my own pair of yarn-over cable socks, for the second time.

Anonymous said...

Shannon, I also want to do mine toe-up with a short row heel. Where did you begin the instep part of the pattern? Where did you add the 65th stitch? Did you reverse the stitch pattern or use it as is? Sorry for all the questions, but I can't post at the kal site.