Madelinetosh Socks

According to Ravelry, I began these socks in August. But it has really been a much longer road than that. August was when I finally settled on making them all stockinette stitch and started them for, I think, the fourth time.

But they are done, and that is what matters. Upon finishing the second sock and weaving in the ends, my first instinct was to burn them. That would have been a lot of work gone to waste though, and the fact is, they are rather pretty and extremely comfy.

So I'll keep them and just try to forget all the trauma associated with their creation.

Sock and a bit more sock

Sock season is in full force here in New England, and now that I've darned all my socks it's apparent that I still need more so I've tried to ramp up my efforts a bit.


Last weekend I traveled to New York and back by bus and I can't help but think I should have finished the second sock during that trip, or at least turned the heel. But mostly I just sat with my project in my lap and stared out the window. I'm tempted to start bringing it to work with me, but then it would just be competing with my lunchtime reading and I have a few hundred pages to read before book group next week, so that would just be trading one problem for another. Clearly, something needs to be done because this sock isn't going to knit itself.

This Yarn Is Cursed

I have tried and tried to find a pattern that will work with my skein of Madelinetosh yarn in "Bearded Iris," but no matter what I do it pools into big gobs of purpliness and separate big gobs of yellowyness. I am shocked to look through my old posts and see that I haven’t written about this ongoing and apparently futile struggle. But I have been documenting it photographically so I will summarize for you now.

First I tried the Herringbone Rib pattern from Knitting Socks with Handpainted Yarn. This pattern was one of the reasons I bought this book – it is so lovely, but not with this yarn.

Cleverly, I thought that with a different size needle it may not pool the same. I was right, it pooled in a slightly different way.

It was a bit less blotchy and more like a thick zigzagging stripe, but still not acceptable.

Determined not to give up, next I tried a simple rib pattern.

And you can see how well THAT turned out. I'm mystified about why I knit so far before admitting defeat. (I was probably watching Pride & Prejudice or some equally long and distracting movie.)

I shoved the sock in a bag for a while until several months later I was feeling masochistic again. I went back to Knitting Socks with Handpainted Yarn and tried a pattern called Rib Fantastic, which allegedly "swirls the colors around." Surely that is what I need!

The colors were not sufficiently swirled. The other side of the sock, as you might expect, is primarily purple.

Finally, convinced that much more abuse would render the yarn completely unknittable, I ripped back to the cuff and continued in stockinette.

So bland, so boring, but these lopsided stripes are the most acceptable look I’ve gotten from this yarn so far.

What were the good people at Madelinetosh thinking when they designed this colorway? Do they not test knit their yarn? Or is the goal for it to simply look nice in the skein? Perhaps they don’t even think ahead to the possibility that someone may want to knit something out of it. I can’t think of another explanation as to why they would put such beautiful colors together in a way that looks so clumsy and unpleasant when you try to make it into something.