A mighty swatch

Okay, remind me not to get creative.

I had these grand visions of a really cool sock. It involved entwining cables, and working them around the increases in a way that I thought would be cool. My first obstacle was charting these entwining cables. But then I saw the Ribbed Lace Pullover in A Gathering of Lace. The perfect entwined cables, all charted out for me!

The next obstacle came when I had to fit my gauge to the pattern. At a gauge of 6.5 spi (stiches per inch), with a pattern repeat of TWENTY-FOUR stitches, I was looking at a sock that was either 48 stitches around, measuring about 7" circumference, or 72 stitches around, measuring 11" circumference. At first this seemed completely undoable, but then I recalled that the recipient has very chunky heels, and socks must be generously stretchy to even pull on. I also recalled that the cables will pull in tightly. And lastly, as it's all knit in 2x2 ribbing, with cables, it would not measure 11" around, but be pulled in quite a bit. So I decided to proceed with 72" stitches around, and see how it fit. I only knit one sock, instead of the customary two, so I could see how it went.



Thus I knit a very large swatch. In trying it on him, I found that around the ankles it was very loose, but if I made the sock tall enough to go up his leg, as was my intention, it fit okay. It wasn't perfect, really, but I proceeded.

Then I noticed how little yarn was remaining in the ball. I got out my handy-dandy scale and measured what remained. 29 grams. Seeing as this is a 50 gram ball (Second ball actually weighs 46 grams), this means I'd used nearly half and hadn't even gotten close to starting the increases. I would probably need 100 grams to finish this sock. Ain't happening.

Ribbit.