Feb continued...

So, here is how the rest of my February went. 

Let's start with my STR project.  A while back I mentioned a beautiful skein of orange-red-purple STR that I had set for my next Feb. project.  Well, I finally found the perfect pattern for this yarn--Ann Budd's Diagonal Rib socks.  Simple enough to show off the yarn, but enough of a pattern to keep things interesting.  So I started and I loved the striping, but as I got to the heel, something just did not look right.  You see, I started these as I got onto an airplane so I took a quick glance at the stitch pattern and took off.  But in my haste, I only read the first two lines of the pattern stitch and figured I got the hang of it.  You should know, I am a lazy knitter when it comes to socks. 

On a long train ride from NYC to Boston, I realized my diagonal ribs were not so much...diagonal.  And the pattern was taking me a really long time to knit.  Sure enough, the lights came on and I realized ('duh!) the twisted stitch should alternate every other row.  I tried a few rows to see how noticable it was, and the answer is very.  Did I mention I had a good 9 inches of cuff plus a heel finished?  So, I put them on hold while I worked up the strength to rip them back.



Hamburg harbor, March 2011.

 I found my motivation a few weeks later on another train.  This time, it was a short ride from Bremen to Hamburg in northern Germany.  I ripped and ripped, and started anew.  Took much less time the second time around and by the end of March, they were finally finished.  Not coincidentally, I finished then up during yet another train ride, this time from Bremen to Frankfurt. 

Frankfurt am Main

Here they are.

I must admit, I love how this yarn looks in the pattern.  I made the usual modifications--top-down, alternating slip-stitch heel (my fave for STR) and gusset, with a few extra stitches picked up in the gusset increase to make up for the fact that this is a dense fabric with not as much stretch as, say, a 2x2 rib.  I also intentionally went down a couple of needle sizes to make it a more dense fabric.

At the end of the month, due to my laziness-induced error, I essentially made these twice: once in Feb and once in March.  I will count them as a March project, which of course means I am not one, but two projects short in Feb.  So yeah, I gotta give away some yarn...