Sunday, July 10, 2016

A serious case of crochet sock startitis

I have developed a serious case of sock startisis. In case you're not familiar with the term here's the Urban Dictionary definition:

Startitis: noun - Repeatedly starting new projects while still having multiple uncompleted projects.
 
Melanie is plagued by startitis. She frequently starts knitting something new rather than finish her other incomplete projects.
 

 
 
I am definitely making great progress on my summer mission to find the ultimate crochet sock pattern and I'm learning SO MUCH about socks but I now have five socks started but not completed. It feels a little excessive.

Sock #1 is the Survival Socks pattern that appear in an earlier post of mine The Hunt for the Ultimate Crochet Sock Begins and I'm working on this with one of my students in the weekly workshop I run on a Friday at my local yarn store. And I'm almost there. It's a toe up design and I'm just finishing off the cuff ahead of my student so that's fine. 

Sock #2 is the current most popular sock on Ravelry coincidentally called the Ultimate Crocheted Sock (with an -ed) by Dorothy Hardy. This time the pattern called for an extended single crochet stitch and I just LOVE how stretchy this stitch makes my sock compared to single crochet. However, still being the sock novice I need photos really and there was an error in the pattern which threw me a bit. And something odd happened with my gauge - the sock is huge. (I have since discovered that I need to make the sock 1/2 inch to 1 inch smaller than my foot circumference because this stitch will stretch.) #2 has been abandoned.
 
Sock #3 is above. It's from Karen Ratto-Whooley's absolutely super book I Can't Believe I'm Crocheting Socks which I bought recently. It's the cabled sock and I'm using Premier Yarns Wool-Free Sock Stripes yarn in the Phoenix colorway purchased from Hobby Lobby. I had intended to make a basic sock from Karen's book. She has both cuff-down and toe-up basic sock patterns in the books. But all of my sock stash is in fingering / sock weight and the patterns call for DK weight. It would be more sensible to start with thicker yarn and a bigger hook and work down to fine yarn so I can see the reason for the yarn weight choice. The basic sock patterns have extremely good photo tutorials with differently color coded parts of the sock. Looking at these I was able to visualize exactly what happens at different parts of a sock. For the cuff down pattern there is the cuff, leg, heel flap, heel turning, gusset, foot and toe. SO helpful!

The most recent socks that I've started #4 and #5 are not entirely my fault because I am working to someone else's deadline - Rohn Strong has a July sock crochetalong (sock #4) and also started a sock club this month (sock #5) which I couldn't really resist.

Well better get back to the socks..... Hope your week is going wonderfully!!
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

2 comments:

Dianna M said...

Good luck with all your socks!!!

Crafty Escapism said...

Thank you Dianna. Writing about all my socks has actually been the catalyst to finishing my first pair of crochet socks. Yay! At long last!

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