Rooster Rockin' Socks

Goodness, I can't believe it's April already. I'm convinced that time flies by faster as you get older. And boy, do I feel old!

Anyway, the time flying by hasn't been entirely devoid of knitting. I present to you . . .

Rooster Rock Socks!

I really like this colorway. It's a beautiful mix of darker red, pewter gray, eggplant purple, sienna brown, chocolate milk brown, sage green, and lots of other shades in between. I'm very pleased with the way the socks turned out--which is good, because I frogged three times before finally settling on a circumference of 64 sts in order to avoid pooling!

I had tried a few ribbed patterns and a stockinette sock of 60 sts in circumference, but all my attempts resulted in an less-than attractive pooling of the reds in one area of the fabric and the browns in another. Not good. 64 sts is a just a smidge bit looser than I'd like, but it produced the best fabric. At least, it produced what I thought was the best fabric after three previous tries.


Pattern: Generic top-down socks, 64 sts in circumference, with 20 rounds of 1x1 ribbing at cuff
Yarn: Socks that Rock, Rooster Rock colorway
Needles: 2 Addi Turbo US 1 circulars, 12" and 24"
Recipient: Me. Like the Kyoto Fantasy Shawl, these socks were knit primarily in Japan. So they're special to me!


It's hard to believe that the spring semester of school is already almost over. I had high hopes for this semester, especially with regards to stash reduction (good to know I have my priorities straight, right?) . But I finally had a reality check just this past week or so and reminded myself that socks and other small portable projects are still all I can really afford to work on while I'm in school. I'm just not at home at regular enough hours, with sufficient amounts of time, for me to commit to knitting a sweater, even though I have plenty of sweaters queued up in the stash. A sweater would languish in a pile for months, and when I finally finished it, it'd probably fit all wonky because my gauge would be inconsistent.

As a result, although I've been trying to knit a lot, and I have made more socks this spring than I've ever made before in a similar period of time . . . the actual physical size of the stash has not been reduced in a tangible way commensurate with my knitting efforts. Sock yarn just doesn't consume a whole lot of volume, unfortunately. It's sort of disappointing, considering how many stitches I've knit over the past few months. I had hoped to have a reduced stash to move to Houston at the end of the school year, but instead I'm arranging with GPG to find space in his apartment for some new stash containers (because really, what I have isn't adequate) to store the not-very-reduced stash.

Oh, well. I'm not disappointed in my knitting in general, and I certainly love all my stash as much as I did before. But this certainly strengthens my resolve not to buy any new yarn for a while. Even if the Webs anniversary sale is just a click away, tempting me with beautiful yarns.


At least the stash reduction continues. I'm particularly proud of myself this week for digging into some Koigu I've had for well over a year. Pictures of that will come soon!