All peppy long stockings posts

For any of you that feared I might be wracked with malaria or some other such disease, fear not. I've been fighting a fever, cough and general run down feeling which may possibly be strep throat, but I've been taking it easy and getting lots of rest, and am already starting to feel better. Saw the doctor on Friday and will know on Monday if it's strep. As a side note, does anyone else have the hardest time with those giant q-tips being jammed down their throat? Man alive!

Between vegging out on the couch watching cartoons, and sleeping, I was able to snap a few photos of my Peppy Long Stockings in all their glory. Here are the pattern notes as well.
Pattern: Peppy Long Stockings
Designer: Me (but based on your every day toe up sock with short row toe and heel)
Yarn: Unknown. It's a self striping sock yarn but I've long ago lost the label. It came in a 100 gram skein, 94 grams of which were used to make the pair of socks. If anyone recognizes the yarn, please let me know.
Needles: Started as 2 socks on 2 circs, switched to DPNs, all in size US #2

I didn't do any shaping in these socks and they fit fairly well. They are a touch baggy at the ankle if I stand on tip toe, but otherwise look pretty cute.

It managed to work out pretty well with the toe, heal and top of the socks coming out in red. It wasn't planned, but it is exactly what I'd want to happen.

And what's a photo shoot without my little glammor girl?

As I knit away on sock number two, the question arises, can a knee length sock with no shaping, whatsoever, possibly fit a relatively shapely leg?

All signs point to yes! Sock number two is actually a bit further along than shown in the pic. These socks will be perplexing passersby in no time.

Oh and thank you to everyone who left my blog a happy birthday note. It's so sweet to hear from first time commenter, old friends and everyone in between. Being the insanely shy person I am, I know I'd never have gotten to meet you all (even if it's only virtually) without this glorious interweb thingy.

They've got HUGE socks.

Well, my feet are pretty average, but check out this sock, baby. I've just started the ribbing portion which will run three color stripes deep, ending in a red stripe.

I don't know, maybe I'm getting subliminal messages about stripes but I'm really smitten with these socks. I should note that I own no (appropriate) skirts or shorts with which I could wear these and display them to best advantage, and yet I simply cannot wait to finish knitting both socks so I can wear them. There's a little twisted part of me that thinks I should wear them with one of my official work outfits, you know blazer, long trousers, ankle length boots, and the most crazy arse socks ever. The likelihood is that no one would know I had on my peppy long stockings, but if someone did catch a glimpse it'd definitely confirm my "not quite right in the head" status with them.

I've got some new handspun too.

Same technique as the redwood colorway, but in pine instead. This particular batch of roving has tended to leave a little dye on my fingers, and lost a bit of blue in the bath, but is otherwise lovely and really does spin up to look like a pine forest.

So I am weak. I had every intention of knitting a whole pair of socks on 2-circulars needles. I was going to force myself to become a skilled practitioner of the technique. I said to myself, "Marnie, you cannot judge a method until you have really learned it, so do a whole pair of socks this way."

But it's all I can take. The socks have gone their separate ways and are now to be knit on DPNs alone. In my defense, I did move them well after the production of both heels, so I certainly knit a full sock's worth of sock, these are just going to be particularly long socks.

And on the topic of long socks, my most current measuring efforts suggest that I should have no trouble reaching my knees with this babies. I'm not sure that's necessarily a good thing. This may be a case of You Knit What? But I'm proceeding ahead regardless.

From what I can see, I am nearly doubling my knitting production, now that I'm back to knitting socks on DPNs (and yes, I am accounting for the fact that I was knitting twice the number of socks before). What really slowed me down was the pushing and pulling of socks and needles to get started on a new row. In general, I find it inefficient, but on a bus, it's nearly exasperating, as I contort to move everything around without touching my bussly neighbor. I'm as much of a process as product knitter, finding my fingers antsy when I have no knitting to do, but my process needs to be product oriented. Does that even make sense?

On a different topic, now that I'm back to spinning more regularly, here's some more Almost Solid Roving, this time in Corriedale in colorway, Pine.

For those of you for whom my ability to describe a technique, has let you down, here's what I meant by the thigh roll. I haven't been able to find a good example of the cabling method I described for both my hair and for the spinning.

The socks have been my mindless diversion lately. They get knit on the bus or in waiting rooms, where the balls are tucked away in my knitting bag. Since I have a handy dandy cooking scale, I was able to divide the original skein of yarn evenly into two separate balls. After that, it was a matter of cutting of a couple grams of yarn on one ball to get them both started in the same spot (in this case, at the beginning of a brown stripe. The smaller of the two balls ends with a complete red stripe and a little bit of yellow, so it means I can have socks that have red toes, red heals and a red cuff. YAY.

What I hadn't noticed until recently, was how many repeats I actually had. I'm about to complete the second repeat, and it's already past my ankle, and then I have 2 more full repeats plus a couple stripes after that. That means my socks can be twice as long (from toe to cuff) as they are already.

I'm torn though. If the sock doesn't reach to my knee, and I'm not quite sure it will, will it just become a slouchy mess? Am I better off making a shorter sock?

I plan to do quite a bit of ribbing at the top of the sock (maybe 2-3 inches) but if it's mid-calf, I'm not sure that will help.

Anyone with sockspertise should feel free to chime in.