Finished objects of beauty*!

Look!
Bayerische is done, all done, grafted, off the needles and the ends woven in ... done, done, done.
Today its all about Bayerische, apologies if you are tired of the green sock saga, but today it really is all about the green sock, the 110 day sock as I have renamed it in Ravelry. Once I knew that today was day 110, well it seemed that I had to finish it today or tomorrow (day 111), because the 114 day sock just didn't have the same ring to it.

Last night I reworked the toe of sock number two .. only that time the sock ended up too short ... sighing, I frogged it back and decided that it might be time to frog the toe of sock number one as well. I thought it would be easier if I worked both sock toes at once .. so spent the rest of the evening manipulating stitches and rounds and needles, and working and frogging until both socks were at the same stage. There is an odd tension between the stretchy 1x1 twisted rib of Bayerische and the number of stitches needed to fit all the pattern-work in that makes standard sock guidelines about length before working the toe not apply. This sock is one of those exceptions to the i-before-e rule of length and toe and heel formula. But this sock is so worth knitting, really worth it, even if I did knit 5 toes to finish. Today whist Poppy was at ballet I knit both toes to the tips one last time, and grafted them closed.


I wove the tails in using my current favorite technique for weaving in ends. In this method you pick the path the yarn takes and replicate it with the yarn end as you weave ... making the weave nearly invisible. There is a tiny thickening where the weaving is - but that soon beds into place. Once blocked it can be very difficult to see where the weaving is.

On the outside ... no evidence of any weaving at all :-)


Near the rib top of the sock, on the inside of the sock I wove the tail in down one side of a knit rib, there is a rhythm to doing this, I spiral the needle clockwise down one side of the stitches scooping them up onto the needle.
Then I pull the tail gently firm and turn the work, before spiraling the needle up the other side of the rib stitch.



Once that is done, I pull the yarn gently firm and snip off the extra yarn. Again all that is visible is a slight thickening of the stitch. I try and leave a few millimeters of yarn spare .. as sometimes if I snip it to short the end works its way to the outside and sticks out like a little tuft. I like this technique of weaving in, Lorna showed me at a glove workshop some years back, and she used it on the outside of the fingers and once she gave the glove finger a tug - the weaving disappeared like magic.






Today was another sunny day, so I chose to work on the front stairs .. and had my furry friend Yo-you keep me company. There was even yarn play ... carefully controlled yarn play ... but yarn play all the same.

Finally the evidence - two completed toes - closed and finished.

And this is my weaving egg, I do have a sock darning mushroom, but use this little wooden egg to pad out the toe while I weave it closed. The mushroom is larger and flatter, and not really a good fit for a toe. I'm not sure what the egg was made for, other than decoration, but it fits inside a toe quite nicely. I bought it in a trade-aid craft shop, its made of wood (they do sell stone ones as well) and it does duty very very well.

So ... next ... a sock the opposite of Bayerische, fast and furious with thick yarn and thick needles. Yes, really .. so unlike me that its fun, I started it at knit night and its growing fast, I'll show you next time, promise.

Stella

* - I am usually modest- but do think these are beautiful, although that is owed in part to several other people, Eunny Jang for the beautiful pattern, and to Morag of Vintage Purls for the indi-yarn, and Lorette who asked on EJ's blog how to make these knee highs and got me thinking about how she was right - they would make a great knee highs ... me I 'just' did the knitting, all of it, two times over (once for each sock), some of it twice or thrice :-) (maybe I'm a little giddy at them finally being done).