Tuesday, July 13, 2010

not serious enough

because i've been knitting a lot of socks lately (see above!), i've been on ravelry looking at socks and sock patterns quite a bit. i've noticed that quite a few knitters do things a bit differently than i do. for one things, many of them match the stripes on their socks up. others who use self-striping or variegated yarn do it in a way to avoid "pooling," which is when a color collects at certain spots, making a little "pool" of color in an otherwise mixed up palette. i don't do either of these things. i kind of dig when the stripes don't match, and i think of pooling as just one of those things that hand painted or variegated yarns do. trying to fight against it is time consuming and sometimes futile. i like to think that i'm expressing more of a go-with-the-flow attitude that outright laziness, but i'm sure some serious knitters out there will furrow their brow at me.

i have to admit though, that whenever i see a blog or ravelry post about pooling or striping and knitters who make themselves frog row upon row of their work because things don't "match" i always want to leave a comment along the lines of "but dude! both are the same color! just go with it, man!" if you are a serious knitter, one who matches everything on their socks up, may i suggest trying to knit a pair where you let the yarn do what it will? you might be surprised at how cute your socks end up.

evidently i am more of a hippie than i want to be, and my socks never match up unless they are knit in solid colors. which has happened one time so far, because you know how i love stripes.

3 comments:

Debbie aka Cheesegirl said...

Hi, I'm a long time lurker but I have to tell you that stumbling across your blog and seeing your knits at the time prompted me to pick up the needles again and learn some new things. Now I've been making all sorts of things in the past 3 years or so and love socks.
Now I'm trying to use up all sorts of leftover sock yarn to make stripey socks and don't care if they match. They're mine and I made them!!:) Thanks for inspiring me.
I'm moodybq on Ravelry.

amanda said...

debbie! you are way more adventurous when it comes to sock making. i saw your awesome twisty stripey ones, and they blew me away. i'm so glad you're knitting socks! everyone should, i think. they are too fun *not* to knit.

Debbie aka Cheesegirl said...

LOL, I'm late to that funky Skew sock bandwagon. 1400 others have made then before me and it baffles me still how the author came up with the construction. Pure genius!