I spent some time with my stash over the past week. I had to have a few Come to Jesus conversations with myself. They went something like this:
Do not be ridiculous. It is literally impossible for you to not have 600 yards of a laceweight yarn you like. Look at the laceweight yarn you own. LOOK AT IT. It's beautiful!
and then:
You spend half your waking life complaining about your inability to avoid purchasing variegated skeins of sock yarn even though you know it's hard to find a pattern for them. How can you now say you have no variegated sock yarn that would work with this pattern? HOW?
In the stash is a lovely skein of Pagewood Farm Alyeska sock yarn in the Vineyard Blues colorway. They've discontinued that yarn base, but they still have the color on other bases.
The problem, if it can be called that, is that it is only 360 yards. That makes me nervous I'll run out of yarn before I finish a second sock. Remember this? I live in fear of it.
The answer is a toe-up pattern. I've had Paper Moon in my mental queue since it was published in 2011, but I kept putting it off because I don't enjoy toe-up patterns like I do cuff-down. Clearly, this was a toe-up sort of skein. I wound it into two 50 gram balls and plan to knit each sock until I run out of yarn.
Paper Moon Socks (mine ravelled here),
knit in Pagewood Farm Alyeska, Vineyard Blues Colorway
I honestly can't remember if it took three or four tries to successfully get the toe started. Someday starting a toe will be easier. That day is not today. At one point, Andrew, a nonknitter, stopped, stared, and said incredulously, "Are you doing toe up? WHY?" Man, I love him.
Regardless, it's now started and I'm excited to finally make myself a pair of Paper Moons!
I'm not the only one who has projects they want to make that take five years to get started for no apparent reason, right?
Right. Let's not talk about the 30-year-waits. :)
ReplyDeleteI'm not big on toe up AT ALL. I look forward to your thoughts on these socks!!!!
ReplyDeleteYou are definitely not the only one who waits that long! I have things I've had my eye on longer than five years.... my problem is that sometimes I want to work with a specific yarn (and then that pattern doesn't go with that yarn) or when I don't have a yarn in mind, I'm too tired for a complicated pattern and want something easy. Oh, brains!
ReplyDeletePS. Toe-up is pretty much the only way I knit socks any more - but I cheat... I have a standard toe and heel pattern I use, and then I just toss the stitch pattern from that sock into my standard recipe (which means my socks don't always match the pattern exactly). Paper Moon has been on my list for a while, but when I get to it I plan to toss the instep/leg pattern into my regular recipe (even though that heel is cute).
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