Fiber Fool

Well, I decided to go with my gut when it came time for SnB on Monday evening and did the Balance sock. It will give the knee highs the air of cables without all that extra bulk which this big girl doesn’t need on her legs (even though they are not bad for big girl legs). It ended up that the Balance sock also won the vote. It is probable that I will at some point knit Spearfish knee highs as well as others. It makes sense to have a bit of a knee high wardrobe if the only clothes that really fit me properly are skirts.

I’m making some progress on them. If you hadn’t figured it out by now I’m doing the two socks on two circs method. I stuck with my 16 inch circs though which I know some people think you can’t even use to knit one sock on two circs. It is going well for me. I like that there is little readjustment needed of the needles when I switch between the circs. It works well for me. My biggest complaint about the magic loop was all that rearranging constantly.

I shall have to either do short row heels (of which Lolly posted some links to great tutorials of yesterday) or probably use DPNs to do the inverted heel flap and gusset as there certainly isn’t room on these circs for all the extra gusset stitches of two socks. But I’ll tackle that problem when I get to it. I wish I could get my hands on a copy of the book, but I don’t particularly care to own it, I just want to peruse it to see what their preferred heel method is etc. and our library doesn’t have a copy. I can get one through ILL, but that could take a week or more. Oh well!

I’m using the Lana Grossa Meilenweit Mega Boot Stretch yarn. If you take a closer look at the left foot you can see it will do a bit of the Trekking XXL-like ombre striping. I have no idea if I could have matched stripes on this or not, but I like the non-matchiness of the Trekking so this is fine that it isn’t matching up.

Now I obviously can’t comment on the washability and durability of this yarn, but I can comment on what it is like to knit with it. It has the word “stretch” in the title. I thought it would be a good choice for knee highs, however, it isn’t any stretchier than some of the preferred sock yarns that are just spun for stretchiness like Koigu, Lorna’s Laces, etc. The construction of the yarn is somewhat similar to Cascade Fixation in the form of a core ply of what I’m guessing is the “Elite” that the other plies are wrapped around. The wool blend plies that are on the outside are very lofty and lightly spun. This means it all comes apart quite readily while knitting which means it is easy to split the yarn. That isn’t my favorite trait. I can overlook splitty yarn for a sweater or something, but for socks which are my go everywhere and get knit while doing everything sort of project I’d really prefer to not have to pay much attention when I’m forming my stitches.

Now, it isn’t the worst. Certainly yarns like Lion Brand’s Microspun split much worse. The knit fabric itself is good on the turbo 1s that I’m using. The yarn isn’t so bad that I’ll rip out these socks and start over with something else, though I’ll probably think long and hard before I buy more, certainly for as large of a project as knee highs. It would have to be a very spectacular color scheme that I hadn’t seen elsewhere or that before I add any of it to the stash.