FO: Pompous socks

Bonus post: I done make some boot socks!

You know, I’m trying to break the habit of apologising for my pictures, but honestly. You’d think I could show off an actual finished project a bit better than this. Photographed last night, by Armin; I thought the advantage of having someone else behind the camera would outweigh the terrible lighting, but evidently not.
Oh well. They looked really cute with my boots, and kept my feet very snuggly all day.

Note to self: learn to make your socks SMALLER. Negative ease! Otherwise I’ll never be able to show them off in cute strappy shoes… and while these are officially Boot Socks… cute little heels would have been good too, no?
*sigh*
Pattern: Veronik Avery’s Spiral Boot Socks from Interweave Knits, Summer 07. (Ravelry link – sorry if you can’t get in yet!)
Yarn: Posh Yarn’s Emily (lambswool/angora/cashmere), in Pompous colourway. Gorgeous, non? So squishy and warm!
Needles: 2.75mm rosewood Sox Stix. I loved the colour of these needles with this yarn! Also, these socks were what I was working on throughout Ally Pally as well as Stitch n Bitch day – which, inexplicably, I haven’t even blogged about, but it was fab – so any time people asked what sox stix were like to use, I was able to give them a demo. They were convinced!
Mods: I cast on an extra 8 stitches and did one extra pattern repeat down the leg, to accommodate my chunky calves. I also reversed the pattern stitch for the second sock, because I like symmetry. This worked fine up until the foot, when for some reason, at first I had real trouble with placing the yo and ssk bits… The really interesting part about that was that, although on a row-by-row basis I was ostensibly doing fine, progress was slow. Really slow. Slow like swimming backwards through treacle with a camel tied around my neck. Once I decided to rip back and do the foot over, adjusting the chart placement stuff, suddenly it was full steam ahead. It went so fast, I actually knit 3cm too far before I thought to check if it was time to start the toe yet. Weird, huh? Lesson learned: If my knitting isn’t happy, I better stop and ask it why.