When I first began knitting I realized that if I wanted to recreate a picture in intarsia I needed to figure out my exact gauge. I'm a good study, and I knew enough to make a large swatch in the same yarn and the same needles I was planning to use. I took the gauge, put it into Excel, and made myself my own personal gauge chart.
Then I took a large picture of Lightning McQueen, taped it to the window on a sunny day, and put my gauge graph on top of it. Trace, color, and voila! I had my intarsia chart. I didn't let it bother me that I did not have any intarsia experience, I just kept several good knitting books around while I did it, and the results were awesome.
So when I decided I really wanted feather and fan lace socks, I did a big gauge swatch, took out Sensational Knitted Socks that I had ordered expressly for this sock yarn, and began my math journey. Let it be shown that I measured and made notes:
Still, when my gauge said that I was knitting at 9 stitches to the inch, and the sock I wanted to knit in the feather and fan pattern was going to yield a sock that fit either an 8 inch diameter foot or a 10 inch diameter foot, I wasn't sure what to do. I knew I needed to end up with a 9-inch sock that stretched to 9.5 inches.
Actually, deep down I knew that this pattern wasn't going to work with these socks, but I was in denial. This is the yarn, this is the pattern, it will work by the force of my will. I decided to knit the bigger one, but I'd knit it "really tight" and hope my gauge hit 10 or so. I even BENT THE NEEDLES getting it that tight. (The needles work just fine bent, thank you. They conform nicely to my demands.)
I ripped out what I'd begun as my test swatch, and began again with 88 stitches, going for the 10 inch sock, and then realized it was huge. It was going to be 10 inches, but it would be baggy. I ripped back to the toe, and stopped increasing at 66 stitches for the 11 stitch repeat (yes, 77 is probably perfect, but I was believing that I should have the same amount of stitches on each side). Now that I'm halfway up the foot, each time I try it one I realize that OOPS, lace is not very flexible, and even though it fits, it's not roomy. I like roomy. My toes like to breathe.
Isn't it beautiful? It would be perfect for a woman with size 7 or 8 feet in a normal width. Someone like....my mom.
So now the dilemma -- rip back a 3rd time and start with 77 stitches, just putting 3 repeats on the top of the foot until I get to the leg? Rip back a 3rd time and choose a new pattern? Or keep going and give them to my mom?
I'm leaning towards the first one. I love the yarn, and I picked it expressly for myself. I like the pattern. I love my mom, but I don't know if she wants socks. Actually, she'd probably love socks. She's not a big pink person though. She'd love some blue ones, I'll bet. I bet she'd wear them only when her feet were in the air, and take them off before they touched the ground.
Don't you LOVE how I can justify keeping the socks for myself?
On another note, my big Japanese calligraphy test is this month, and I've finished my submissions for that test. I'm hoping to do well -- I'm particularly pleased with the left two. For those not familiar with Japanese calligraphy (shodo), these pieces of paper are about a foot wide and about 4.5 feet long. I grind the ink by hand, and have to get the color right. There are all sorts of things that make shodo "beautiful" that would be considered mistakes in many other forms of art. The ink trailing off in an intermittent streak -- it's called "kasure" and it is a very desired effect. The changing of the ink's tone, the addition of fresh ink in a spot that is NOT at the top of the paper, and in an appropriate break in the poem -- all these things are considered. I have a very good teacher who tells me exactly how to write it.
I won't know until August or even September if I go up a level. It's like karate or judo -- you get different rankings as you go on! My husband likes to say that I'm a black belt in shodo.
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