NEW : Grey Stripes Sock Project (& FF&L Update)

On Saturday, very spontaneously, I decided to start a new pair of socks. It suddenly occurred to me that I needed a small project to work on when I was out & about. Case in point - I had a hair appointment Saturday afternoon (color, weave & cut) which would be about 2 1/2 to 3 hours long, of which a good bit of that time would consist of just sitting around "processing." So the light bulb went off in my head and voila!, a sock project was born. This would be real simple to work on under the hair dryer. The catch was, could I cast on & get started before it was time to leave for my appointment? (I use the magic loop, 1 circ-2 socks method and it does take a bit of time to get the cast on down pat). In addition, I had a skein that I needed to divide into 2 balls. I'm using Reynolds Swizzle, in a grey with red, blue & green stripes (#4042 colorway).

The 1 skein to 2 balls process took me about 45 minutes. I must admit, I did have help from the "peanut gallery," (Scooter & Cleo).










I first had to wind the skein into a ball. Then I had to divide that ball in half, trying to get two equal balls. Here are the 2 balls eye-balled for "sameness." The left one is good to go.




Because I want the yarn running in the same direction (ie: same patterning sequence), I had to rewind the right ball. Here are the two completed balls of yarn.



Now the hard part - casting on using the magic loop method, 2 socks at a time. The picture below shows 75% of the cast on completed - 32 stitches for the 1st sock and 64 stitches for the 2nd sock.




This picture shows the completed cast on. The remaining 32 stitches of the 1st sock are now cast on.




5 rounds of the cuff are completed. Basic ribbing for cuff: K2, P2






The cuff after 10 rounds and 20 rounds, respectively. Cuff now complete. Scooter likes what she sees.






I am experimenting with using the bamboo stitch for the leg. 3 rounds in the pattern have been completed in the following picture.




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FF&L: % Complete as of Monday, 12.12.05

WORKING ON 4TH REPEAT OF CHART 2 (4 rounds to go)

Four rounds knit since my last update --> 126 total rounds completed.

• 53,088 stitches cumulative (3,680 stitches since my last update)
• 39% of body completed (2% since my last update)
• 33% of entire shawl completed, including edging (2% since my last update)