stripey smiley

pattern: a super simple basic sock in stockinette with a k1p1 cuff knit over 64 stitches with a short-row heel and wedge toe, alternating colors every 3 rows
designer: anyone who has ever knit a sock
yarn: Noro Kureyon Sock in a colorway I would highly recommend and gladly share with you all if I had bothered to save the ball band (DOH!)
needles: Addi Turbos US size#1

They're stripey, and I'm smiley. I had a modest goal this Socktoberfest, if I even considered it a goal, and that was to finish one pair of socks. I cast on for these two weeks ago while visiting Webs with some friends (more specifically while sitting outside waiting for everyone and hoping that the monster headache that was kicking my ass from drinking a beer before lunch would go away, day-dreaming of drowning it with a Coke and some aspirin). Suffice to say, I set these rainbow-colored puppies down for a good bit this week as there's been a lot of other crafty stuff keeping my hands busy. I wasn't sure if I would even finish them before the 31st, but lo and behold, they're done. Whew! And yay!

Funny how the colors go in opposite directions. The stripey rainbow is inverted from one sock to the other. You see how the stripes get a bit muddy in parts? Yeah, I had to cheat a little to get them to stop doing that; I pulled a bit of one color until we got to a contrasting color again, cut all that yarn off, and started knitting again with the contrasting yarn so that the stripes resumed and the muddiness was no more. I repeated it in the second sock, allowing some of the same feathering for an intentional copy of the first sock. I am going to avoid this altogether in my second pair of stripey Noro socks by starting at a different point/color but allowing the colors to go in the same direction (if that makes any sense). Also, for my next pair of stripey Noro socks, I have re-skeined the ball into two separate yarn cakes to avoid the tangliness (and the ensuing exasperation) that I experienced while knitting these (I used different ends of the same skein). Ahem... I may have already started the next pair. What can I say? Maryse got me hooked on Noro!