I'm almost ashamed to say that it has taken three months for me to finish the much-anticipated Soldier Socks. The fault lies mostly with the first sock, and my feeble interpretation of a somewhat ambiguous pattern. To own the truth, I am not all that experienced a knitter, so perhaps the pattern was not so much at fault, but I am definitely the wiser now that I have churned out two of these soldierly sockies.
The stumbling block for me was this tricky little decrease toward the top of the pattern. Not possessing a good head for numbers and sequences, I found it hard to work out whether the "cont. pattern" following the decrease rows meant pick-up-where-you-left-off, or simply commence the pattern sequence at this point. Perhaps a more experienced knitter would have known the right course of action, but it was, at the time, truly bewildering for poor little me.
But, I finally did work it out, and so went to knitting full-steam-ahead once the worst was over. It seems that the first sock took up 90% of the time and the second one the final 10%. I have re-written the pattern along the way, including grids and graphs and succinct explanations of what to do here and there. My rationale being, that perhaps this lovely vintage pattern will be more accessible to other knitters who might look at the original and run!
And they really are supremely comfy; the Railway Stitch produces a lovely stretchy fabric and there is a good deep gusset for the manly man-sized hoof. They are so good, I'm about to order some more sock wool to knit up another pair (now that I have the pattern under my belt). Yes, I will upload it to Ravelry when I finish tweaking the layout. At the moment it runs to eight pages, and that does seem a bit over the top for a sock pattern. Oh, and it just occurred to me that I did also knit two more pairs of socks and take delivery of a grandchild during this period of time. Not that anybody has the stop-watch ticking, but it is good to finally finish that which was started.
And now I'm on to another pair of plain old navy school socks for the man-child, and thinking about what I'll reward myself with when they are off the needles and into the sock drawer. We are having such a warm summer over here, that I've not bothered about knitting up anything more for Baby R, and that cot quilt is still a work in progress. It keeps winking at me from the top of the bed in the spare room, but I am justifying the delay because he is too little to actually be in the cot yet ... And now that I know him, I'm not sure that the quilt suits him at all. I shall therefore procrastinate a little longer and go back to my knitting.
And I have to tell you, I was very clever this afternoon and threw a casserole in the oven before we ran out the door to music lessons. Meaning, I have been able to write this missive and drink tea while the dinner does it's own thing. But it is definitely beckoning now (and I am hungry, and so is The Dog).
Love love,
Evie xxx
