I hope you had a happy Thanksgiving! Mine was quiet, but nice. And some knitting has been accomplished!

I have turned the heels on the class socks and I’m in the home stretch on the legs. The yarn kept to its striping all the way through the gussets and up the heels and back on to the legs. Nice for a change, since I usually get a blog of blechy pooling on the gussets with STR. I like the stripes. I probably won’t be ready to bind off by Tuesday. But that’s OK. My class can bind off without me binding off along with them.

I didn’t get up the legs because I’ve been distracted. The socks are cuddling up to the sweater I started. This is the basket weave henley sweater called the To-The-Cottage Pullover in the Purl Stitch book.

I am knitting it in Trendsetter Yarns Fatigues in color #13 (Khaki). It’s a rather strange 50% wool/50% Polyamide “yarn.” The fibers are spun into 1-ply yarn and woven into fabric. The fabric is then felted, ironed flat and cut into ribbons. The ribbons are sewn up the center to “add a little ruffle” (per the web site – I suspect it’s also to hold the ribbon together under knitting pressure).

I’ve been eying Fatigues since I first saw it, but I couldn’t figure out what to do with it. Naturally as soon as the yarn was discontinued I decided I really had to knit a sweater. 🙄

The resulting fabric is… interesting. It has a strange hand – almost a rubbery squish, but not in any way harsh or scratchy or plastic. It’s also quite light weight, so the sweater will not be heavy to wear. I think I like it. I can see myself wearing this sweater a lot. Of course, that may change as I get further along.

I have a couple of beefs about this pattern: The texture is created sometimes on the right side and sometimes on the wrong side. And the pattern is charted quite strangely, with white squares being K on the RS and P on the WS, and colors squares being P on the RS and K on the WS. Once I had the pattern established I was OK, but getting there was slow because I had to keep stopping to think if I was on the right side or the wrong side and did that mean I needed to purl or knit… It seems like it would have been a lot easier to point out that row #1 is RS, and just have blank squares K and colored squares P. This is supposed to be an easy pattern, and I’m a fairly experienced knitter. The pattern also includes a few cute little errata like saying to work 4 rows in stockinette stitch, beginning and ending with a K row. Can’t be done.

I’m a bit (more than a bit) peeved, since I bought this book specifically to knit this pattern. I’m not sure if I will knit anything else from it or not.

Despite my peevedness, I’m doing OK with the pattern. But I think this helps to explain why googling for the pattern produces only a couple of finished sweaters and scattered comments of adventures in frogging and never again. As long as the damn thing fits when I’m done, I’ll wear it. I wouldn’t look forward to frogging out this yarn.

About knitting socks, Maia opines:

For me it is the tops that never end. Insteps go so quickly that I worry I will knit to much. There must be a corollary to Einstein’s Theory of Relativity relating to socks.

Maia, maybe we can make a partnership: You knit the feet, I’ll knit the legs. We should be able to get finished twice as quick, eh? 😆

~Kristie comments about the class socks:

I LOVE the striping effect of that colorway! I’ve never seen Socks That Rock do that!

What’s your secret? STR always stripes on my socks. The difference between these socks and the usual is that they didn’t pool on the gussets but continued to stripe. That was a pleasant surprise!

In closing… it’s raining. Still. We have now officially had the wettest November ever – and in Portland, that’s saying quite a bit! The snow level is lowering to settle around my house. We do no do well with snow here in the metro area, where many people, myself included, believe that snow should remain in the mountains where it belongs. So far I see wet, green lawn when I look outside. In the morning… we’ll see what we will see!