I tugged tried on my Bellocq last night when I finished the second repeat of the calf shaping - even unfinished, this is now officially the tallest sock I've ever knit! My goal is to finish one stocking every three weeks, so I won't be working on these right down to the wire. Tomorrow is two weeks - hopefully I'll be doing a LOT of work on these this weekend.
Sidebar: I get to knit with real live people this weekend! I don't go to the stitch-and-bitch at my LYS because I can't seem to get into it, and there are meetup groups around, but for some reason I've never done that either. But there's a group of ladies who are in the Rockin' Sock Club who get together occasionally, and this weekend I'm actually free when they've scheduled their gathering! So I'm going to drive to Tampa to meet up with them - it's only about a 90 minute drive. Well worth it to knit with other STR fans! I think there will be about five or six of us, and I'm so excited I'm actually making plans in my head. Travis is amused.
Me: I need to put different stitchmarkers on my socks.
Travis: Is something wrong with those?
Me: No...but they're kind of plain. If I'm going to be knitting with people, I want my sock to have her pretty jewelry on.
Travis: (sound of a head dropping and shaking slowly side to side)
I don't think that's crazy. Whatever.
Okay, here we are:
It's about three inches to my knee, I think, and I'm still very pleased with it. I pulled this on upstairs, then had to come downstairs to get the camera and try to locate decent light in my house at 11:30 at night (dining room + heavy Photoshop edits). Then I had to climb back up the stairs and into the bedroom, where I finally removed the sock. I'm proud to report that I only jabbed myself in the other leg with one of the needles once! But I had to walk very carefully, and I felt a little like a first draft of a character from Grindhouse. ("You know, Quentin, I like the needles sticking out of her leg, but wool and bamboo aren't very menacing. Maybe....I don't know, a machine gun would be better?")
I wanted you to see the calf shaping, and this is about the best I could do with getting a photo of the back of my own leg. (The stitch markers are the new pretty ones I used to replace the plain ones - they're Aija's garnet-and-freshwater-pearl markers, and they're so preeetty.)
I had mentioned that I changed needles shortly into the calf shaping - while the socks aren't completely uncomfortable, I don't think I should have trusted my gauge swatch, and I'm going to knit the second sock on the size 2 the pattern calls for rather than the size 1 needles I (thought I) got gauge with. But the good news is that you can barely tell where I changed needles. (Snort.)
As if I needed to point it out. Hear that deep sigh of relief my calf is taking? I could pretend that it occurred to me to start them over - but no way. Not even if I had all the time in the world. I'm not enough of a perfectionist to really care - they fit well enough and are only just a tiny bit snug, and I'll give a prize to anyone at the wedding who peers at them and declares, "Say, looks like you changed needles right there." (Except you, Susan - that would be cheating!)
I'm off to cross-post at the knitalong!
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