The Speed of Socks

After my trip to the LYS last week, I started a sock for the Moose, then I did a sock for the Roo, and repeated the process. By Thursday morning, I had two complete pairs of socks, and my children now happily wander through the house with striped warm feet. They wear them with the pajamas at night, which makes me think I need to make more so they stay nice and toasty.


I am delaying my gratification in knitting my alpaca hoodie. Instead, I dove into my miniscule stash (I am odd--I only keep yarn around for projects in progress or projects to be) and came up with several skeins of navy blue Encore which were destined to be a Hogwarts scarf. I really have no need for a double-knitted, 10-inch wide scarf here in SoCal, so I frogged the scarf and started a top-down, loose-fit raglan for the Roo (growing room, you see).

I started by making a gauge swatch--25 stitches wide and 25 rows long--and then I used Knittingfool's sweater wizard to come up with a pattern for the sweater. It's all based on Elizabeth Zimmerman's percentage method, but I, the math teacher, did not feel like doing all that math myself. So far, I have only had to make one major modification in the neck. I cast on using US size 6 needles instead of size 5, and I increased the number of stitches to be cast on so it would fit more easily around her head. All this is so she can have a Weasley sweater like the ones Molly makes for her children and for Harry every Christmas. If you need a good picture of one, go to Alison's blog. She even has her own pattern there.


Here's why I opted for a raglan. Though I love seaming sleeves and sides of sweaters, I find setting in the shoulders tedious. It probably has something to do with where I place my increases. It will come with time and practice which only means I get to do more knitting!