Socktoberfumble

So, I blithely signed up for Socktoberfest. I figured that if I could knit a pair of socks during the Olympics, I could surely finish a pair in a whole month.....

Well. Hmmmm.

I started with these. A nice and Octoberish color, orange..... I bought this yarn on the internet, and it was more bright-orange/hot-pink than I thought. That's ok. But what really doesn't quite work for me is the purple. Purple, very near to being complementary to orange, is going to vibrate if there are reasonable amounts of purple and orange. However. When there is just an itty bit of purple, especially when the ends of the bits of purple are *really* muddy, with only itty-bittier bits of true purple, well, alllllll the purple tends to look muddy.

Not a successful colorway, in my humble, and I wouldn't have bought it, in person.

Now if the purple were chartreuse, I bet this would have worked...........


















So I hemmed and I hawed and I couldn't decide if I wanted to knit the orange/muddy-purple socks at all.....

Quite naturally, I put them down and started this, another internet purchase. Isn't it interesting how the barber-poley yarn makes heathery knitting? But I thought the stripes would be a lot wider, and maybe not so clearly defined............


















So then I went back to these. I started them in July, and had one of them well up past the ankle. I had been wanting to pick the colors myself, instead of letting the yarn decide what came next. I liked picking the colors, which were knit with embroidery floss, but I do not love these socks. Perhaps they will grow on me.

Anyway, I finished them in the beginning of November, too late for Socktoberfest, alas.






















I kept the colored stripes really skinny, because I had no interest in weaving in ends, especially not ends of slippery shiny cotton. I tied VERY firm surgeon's knots in the embroidery floss, and left the ends hanging. Hope for me that the knots hold!

















And that was my attempt at Socktoberfest. My success is that I picked up my knitting, after not having touched it since July, and I did manage to finish a pair of socks, if not quite as soon as I'd expected. I have a good start on two more pair. The orange sock is ready to have its heel inserted, so maybe I'll do that over this coming weekend (the heel will go in where the pink embroidery floss is). I think the blue/gray sock is ready to have the "heel goes here" floss knit in.

I do mean to go ahead and finish these........ But I'm ready to knit with some yarn that I LOVE.