Ambivalence

At long last I've finished my Traveler's Stockings. They seem to have taken an eternity to knit, though in reality, it's exactly 50 days since I cast on. However, fifty days is probably the knitting equivalent of an eternity for some of my speedier knitting friends.



The next 'delivery' from my 2009 Personal Sock Club is due on Wednesday, and this is the sole reason I've been able to motivate myself to complete these socks. I've not enjoyed knitting them. I used The Knittery Slim Sock which is a richly dyed yarn with an almost silky surface and good stitch definition. But it's thin. Very thin. Probably would have been better with 2mm needles than the 2.25s that I used. And because of the slipperiness of the rather tightly spun yarn, I had more dropped stitches than usual and a great ideal of practice in picking up and rescuing the dropped stitches. I'm also not sure I like the extent of colour variation in the yarn and the stripey effect. Particularly for the rather elaborate cuff of travelling stitches, I think a more solid coloured yarn that didn't distract from the busyness of the pattern would have been better.



But there are positives. It's a beautiful pattern, written with Nancy Bush's usual clarity and published in 'Knitting on the Road'. I like the contrast of the fancy cuff with the simple sock body, and I think it's very cunning that the cuff is effectively a sampler of different travelling stitches. The socks fit me perfectly; the colour - though busy - is lovely as well as useful (and impossible to photograph accurately); and the good side of the slimness of the yarn is that the socks are very neat and not bulky.



And the best thing about them is that they are finished.