Obsession

Question: Can one knit a toe with six grams of yarn?


Answer: Hell yeah.

Question: Can Carrie finish a pair of socks in four days?

Answer: Hell no.

Here's the story. I cast on for Pomatomus on Friday after struggling with the Scottish Highlands over and over. The yarn is the Claudia Hand Painted Stormy Days from a few posts ago. (Sorry Jennie! I have never actually used Koigu, though I don't doubt that they are very similar, although the color is most accurately portrayed in the original post.) The only reason I decided to make this pattern right this second (aside from Opal's influence!) was that I had wound one of the skeins of the Claudia yarn into a ball a few days ago. No other sock yarn was wound and I was antsy. Pomatomus it was.

I worked on the sock a bit on Saturday. Then I read through the pattern. I mean really read through the pattern. No skimming, as I am wont to do. The pattern calls for Shelridge Farm Soft Touch Ultra Fingerling weight wool, which comes in skeins of 194 yards each. I dug through my bin of skein wrappers and found the one for the Claudia Hand Painted. One-hundred seventy-five yards. Nineteen yards difference. Almost 60 feet. That's a pretty fair difference.

The race was on. I had to know if I would have enough yarn. Suffice to say I spent a lot of time knitting a sock this weekend. I am not duplicating the effort to set some sort of crazy land speed knitting record. Not that I would likely break any records anyway. (Besides, my hands and wrists hurt now. Ow.)

I got lucky people. Really really lucky. I considered making the legs shorter to be safe, but threw caution to the wind and went for the full three pattern repeats whole hog. I weighed the yarn ball as I went along and was pretty sure I would have enough. I only hope I can get the same mileage out of the second skein. There's something like one gram left of the first ball.

ETA: I should probably note that I have relatively small feet, US size 7 1/2, and slightly narrow. Also, I knit the socks on US size 0 needles. Your mileage may vary.

In other news, something came in the mail for me this weekend:




Sandra promised me some Croatian music and sent a few cool goodies along with it! You can see in the photo a cute tissue package (with some tissues!), lovely sewn heart, and a little skein of "Adamo and Eva". I wonder what I can make with it? Thank you Sandra! I Haven't listened to the CDs yet, but I will let you know what my impression is when I do! And in the meantime I shall have to scrounge around to see what I can reciprocate.... :)

posted by Carrie @ 2:58 PM