Argyle

Sunday, April 29, 2007

Yesterday just got too busy and by the time it calmed down it was too dark to take decent pictures. Let me start off by saying that I did start off knitting the argyle socks using intarsia like all of the internet tutorials told me too. However, since my self-designed pattern used smaller diamonds (and lots of them), it was a little crazy-making:



I'm sure it didn't help that I don't have real bobbins and the little bits of yarn kept sliding out of the cardboard slits and tumbling down onto my lap and subsequently got hopelessly tangled on almost every row. I did manage about 4-5 rows before realizing the intarsia was doomed. The last straw was seeing that my stitches were way too tight. I yanked it out and started over with just my original three balls of yarn, determined to learn this fair isle business. I'm happy to say that it worked:



Here's another picture that's a little less blurry but without the diamonds stretched out:



Knitting this brought me back to what knitting was like when I first started. I could hardly put it down! Now that the argyle part is done - I'm knitting the rest of the sock in just black - I wrapped it around my calf to see if it'll fit... I'm not too sure that it will. My floats must still be a little tight. But if it doesn't fit me, I'm sure I could find someone they will fit.

Now that I've conquered the technique, this sweater (which I'm hopelessly in love with) doesn't scare me so much. It's just the price of the yarn and the tiny gauge that scare me now.