Twelve glorious balls of sock yarn. I was at the door before the delivery woman even rang the bell. I think I scared her! I guess she isn't used to such enthusiasm.
For non-knitters and less-than-obsessed-knitters who just don't understand......never mind. I couldn't begin to explain the thrill of an Elann order to you. To those of you who DO understand, you know what I did next don't you? I cast on for a pair of socks of course!
Now comes the sadder portion of this post. Pooling. Yes, that nasty problem that sometimes arises with variegated yarns. I THOUGHT that careful matching of the start of each ball would allow me to have perfectly matching socks. It always has in the past. I made sure that I started at the EXACT same spot on each ball and I knit two at a time so there would be no variance. I'm an admitted perfectionist. I love things that come in pairs to be IDENTICAL. This is what I got:
I only got THAT far on the "pair" because I was semi-distracted by the posts on the Knitter's Review forum that I was reading at the same time I was knitting. I only looked down occasionally, when I was turning the row, and obviously I wasn't really LOOKING at the color patterns.
When I finally saw what was going on, my heart sank. I gazed at it trying to convince myself that it would not drive me crazy to wear "coordinated" socks rather than identical ones. I also sat there wondering why, with all my preparation, did this mismatching occur? Finally I figured that maybe one ball was wound in reverse of the other. I've heard this does happen. A quick test of the matching/mismatching of the color patterns in the two balls made me think I might get better results if I re-balled the yarn from the sock that was doing the pooling. To tell you the truth, even though the dye-lots are the same, the patterning of the color blotches were not identical no matter which way I held the yarn.
So anyway, this morning I dutifully frogged the pooling sock and reballed it from the other end. Then I spent a fair bit of time reknitting the nineteen rows I had frogged. All that work and guess what?
They STILL are not the same! Better perhaps, but NOT identical. I think what bugs me most is that the blending of the colors makes the pink stand out as HOT pink in the right one, but blurs it to a reddish-orange in the other. If I thought I had a chance of improving it, I would be willing to frog yet again, but knowing that the chances are slim, I am leaving it. So, now I will not only be that eccentric lady with the wildly colorful socks, I'll be that eccentric lady with the NON-matching, wildly colorful socks.
2 comments:
Thanks for posting about this. I got some sock yarn from elann in my last order, too, and I think I have that color, and the one in your other picture with blues and pinks (heh... great minds and all that).
You think one of these days I'll actually be brave enough to try KNITTING a sock or two?
I know exactly! how you are about your Elann orders! I am the same. We Elann fans have our ears tuned to the sound of the mailpersons' arrival - for me I know the sound of the postal truck's arrival in front. I got some of the solid sock yarn - a bit thinner than other sock yarns. I enjoyed your post-thanks for the info re pooling.
Terry in SF
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