the patchwork dress: a small completion

Before the new beginnings of a collage I spoke about in the last post, I personally feel at the opposite end of the spectrum, or perhaps the end of the tail of the circle, just before recircling again with a new start I am itching to finish off a few things, maintain and repair other items in my life.

Clearing the decks, completing the old, making space. Perhaps no coincidence that this was a project knitted in the round?

At the beginning of the year I challenged myself to learn something new, something that I could pick up and put down without losing track too much, and something that would have a number of small completions - even if only a couple of rows one evening squeezed between dinner and bed, I would feel as if I were progressing on a personal creative project, even only if increments.

Ok, so they are slouchy socks that will probably never make it over the threshold! I told my perfectionist self it was ok to make mistakes, as these were practice socks - teaching me the technique and there was enough in the pattern to learn, let alone picking up dropped stitches etc - that is something I'll teach myself next.

On the first sock I was so carried away by the heel turning, that I totally missed the part in the pattern which created the sort of rib effect on the heel. So despite them not matching, I tackled it in the second sock.

I am fairly pleased with these 'fireside' socks, seeing as I had to keep looking up reminders on Youtube about how to cast on and basic things like that. It's been a long while since I knitted anything.

This was a very useful video I watched (and rewatched months later for the second sock!) showing how to pick up the stitches for the triangular 'gusset' after the heel. I liked that it was a guy who made the video for his sister and it wasn't annoying like those "now today we're going to" videos that crop up.

Wool and pattern details back here.