I have been knitting apace, but have not been taking pics of socks. I'm trying to use up as much of the yarn as possible, given two of them, and the color repeat..... So I have two socks with 11 stockinette stripes above the stripe with the heel in it, one of which has two more stripes of ribbing and has been cast off, and the other has three stripes of ribbing and is not cast off.

Yesterday was one of those difficult dithering days. Who'd think that casting off could be such a struggle........ I read about different elastic cast-offs, and tried several on a swatch. My swatch yarn started looking pretty tired -- this yarn is not spun all that tightly, and doesn't really like being dragged back and forth (and back and forth and back and forth) through itself.... Which would be why I didn't consider using any sewn methods.....

I finally forced myself to do SOMETHING rather than dither (or worse, yet -- set it down and do something different!), and cast off, knitting the knit stitches and purling the purls, comme ils se present as EZ described it (though I bet she spelled it correctly!).

I used a bigger needle to do the casting off, and I believe it is elastic enough. (One size bigger, I think -- the socks are on 0s, and I *think* the extra I used for the casting off is a 1.)

Naturally I now think I should have knit at least one more stripe before I cast off. I was concerned about having enough yarn for both socks, and I needed to start up the ankle of the other sock with blue.......... (Note to self: learn a heel technique that can be done toe-up without cutting the yarn, so you can just GO until the sock weighs half as much as the original yarn!)

So I erred on the side of caution, and when I'd done the two ribbed stripes on sock1 (with blue coming up next!), I cast off, cut the yarn, and knit sock2 up through the 11 stripes of plain knitting, and then started to rib. I decided that 3 stripes of ribbing look better than 2, and am not sure if I could do *4* stripes of ribbing on both socks with the remaining yarn.

Last night I just didn't trust my brain to correctly discern if I could do yet another stripe before casting off sock2 AND leave enough yarn to knit two more stripes on sock1............


Anyway.

They look really strange to me. I increased as I went up the calf, so that they would't have to stretch to accomodate my calf. I'm used to uninhabited socks looking like tubes, so for them to increase looks ... odd. I do believe they fit, though........... (having tried them on 'leventy million times.....)

I will confess to fears that I will hate them. I've never worn handmade socks before, and these are not the softest yarn...... I can imagine myself lovingly packing them away in a drawer, rather than *wearing* them and finding out I hate them. That, however, would not be in keeping with the courage of an Olympic contender, so I expect I'll manage to force myself to actually *wear* them.........