Anywhere I turn in blogosphere, I either spot elaborate socks or intricate lace. Often both in a single pattern. The commercial patterns (magazines/books) are struggling to catch up and make hay. The lace frenzy was conspicuous at Stitches this year.
I love catching the buzz. But I gotta admit that the excitement puzzles me a little. Either kind of project is knit in fine yarn and consumes considerable time and effort. My Jaywalker endeavour was not the most enjoyable as all the double decreases and increases with #2 US size needles left my joints sore. Then there are the socks with intricate cabling/lace/colour-work designed into them. My worst fear, after pouring love into a perfect pair of socks is that the they'll develop holes. They're socks, they grow holes.
Lace has quite another problem - I rarely find the need for it in my wardrobe. How many formal occassions do I dress up for in a year?
I love to see other knitters' socks and lace though. I am usually in awe. I am working towards them though and am in earnest search for my favourite paraphernelia/techniques. With socks, I'm nearly there. With lace, I have launched on Icarus' shawl from IK using a 100% cotton lace weight yarn bought at last year's Oakland convention.
Lace in cotton? What was I thinking, you ask? Well actually the yarn was bought for a different project altogether, which I later realized was not a good match for the yarn type. I was recently leafing through Amy Singer's 'No Sheep For you' and happened to catch her opinion on cotton lace. Per her, it'll block just as well. I'll find out soon enough. It's coming along pretty though. I'm enjoying the process, the rhythm being quite different from that of colour-work or garment shaping.
With socks, I've nearly found my favourite weight of yarn, size of needles, whether I want a sock-by-sock approach or a simultaneous pair, direction (top-down/toe-up), heel, gusset, and toes. If you'd like to know, it's chunky socks in 100% wool in worsted weight (or perhaps dk if a certain stitch pattern calls for it), top down, and turned heel. Here's a discussion that caught my attention - I'll place this link on my sidebar as well.
I've not tried toe-up but am not too keen either. I get great fit with the other direction and I attribute that to the decreasing (for gusset) rather than increasing. Just today though, I came across a new technique for decreased gusset with toe-up. It's here and here. Really, there's so much going on in this little world that it makes me breathless and excited all at the same time.
2 comments:
A lot of lace patterns out there are done with fine yarn but with needles that aren't quite so tiny--the shawl I'm doing right now calls for 6s, but I'm doing it on 5s. Ok, maybe those aren't actually "big" needles, but all my other current projects are on 1s and 2s! But if you don't think you'd wear it, I can't help you with that one except to say that if you wear scarves, lace scarves might be a fun option.
I'm also doing a pair of worsted weight socks (on 5s, haha) and I think they'll be perfect for around the house, which is where I usually wear my socks anyway.
I bought some purple-y sock yarn at Stitches that I decided really wants to be a lace scarf rather than socks. My hand is improving a bit, so maybe that will be soon.
I think that toe-up heel-flap technique is also used in Sensational Knitted Socks. I was going to try it, but Liz told me she thought it looked funny.
My first pair of socks were from 6-ply (sport weight) yarn, which is a nice weight to wear (fits in my shoes) and is faster than regular sock weight. I think I knit it on 3's.
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