alas!

Would you believe I ran out of yarn? When my #1Son requested pirate socks to match the mittens, I said, "I have just the yarn!" and pulled out my shepherd sock yarn bought on clearance last June. I had 2 balls of black and one of white. My decision on how to make the sock was based on the amount of yarn I had. Clearly I couldn't make the socks completely out of colour work, because I didn't have enough white. I didn't expect to run out of black. Obviously I have a very skewed sense of yarn requirements because I ran out (toe up) just before the colourwork cuff began. This precipitated an emergency run to the yarn store. "Hi, I know you sold this yarn off on clearance six months ago, but do you have anything to substitute?" The substitute looked good, but really, it was thicker. I didn't have much choice so I plugged on with the thicker black. I carried white ahead to compensate for the fact that it was a slightly thinner yarn.

Notes to self: I knit the leg in 3x1 ribbing until the point where his leg started to widen up again. I knit in stockinette stitch once around, and then started with the white stripe. When I got to the first 2-colour row, I switched to a size 6 needle, which persisted through the rest of the sock. When I started the pirate row, I added 2 stitches at the back of the sock to go to 54 stitches, allowing me to add 2 stitches to each repeat of the 16-stitch-repeat pattern. When I got to the row of white fleur-de-lis, I increased again by 2 stitches, getting the total back to a multiple of four. After the final white row, I knit one row in black, purled one row in black, and then cast off with a double strand of black.

Sock 2 needs its colourwork, and then I'll be done.