Commitments

I came home from Raglan (that 10-day SCA event I went to in August) having committed to four knitting projects - three pairs of socks and one "other". You see, I'd gone by myself and planned to eat cold sandwiches and the occasional hot meal from the castle cafe. Instead, a couple of the encampments adopted me for the duration and fed me every day. I did not cook once, and the only times I went to the cafe were the times when we all decided curry was required.

I helped with the shopping and the washing-up, of course, but there were a handful of people who went hugely out of their ways to look after me. So I'm knitting for them. First up was a pair of bedsocks. The recipient always has cold feet at night, and was lamenting the lack of woolly things to keep her warm.

She was quite easy to knit for, as we've got exactly the same size feet. I've sent them to her, and apparently she's not taken them off since she got them. Another pair of Thujas, knit in the mods I normally do for my own Thujas.

The next pair was a bit more of a challenge. The recipient wanted socks to go in shoes, in royal blue or purple. I found some lovely royal blue yarn (although the longer I look at it, the more I think it looks like TARDIS blue), picked a pattern and off I went. The challenge was that her feet are smaller than mine. It's very difficult to estimate sock length against one's own foot if one's feet are bigger! I'd had her try on a pair of my Monkey socks, though, and made a note of where that pattern needed tweaking to fit. The gusset was too tight, and the foot of the sock was about one repeat too long.



This is what I've ended up with. I'm seeing her next month at another event. Hopefully they'll fit. The pattern is Blackrose, from Knitty, knit on 2.25mm needles over 72 stitches. A simple enough pattern, and done in such a way that several sizes are available. I didn't find the lace pattern intuitive, though - despite having worked it 28 times, I never managed to memorize it. Ah well, they're done now.

I'll measure the feet of the next recipient at the event next month and find out how she likes her socks, but I won't be casting on until the New Year - there's too much Christmas knitting to do between now and then!