Belatedly tangled

Two pairs of legwarmers

I've been trying to figure out legwarmers for Miss T. They're useful; she twists and crawls, so there's often a gap to fill between socks and pants. Also, she has a pair of rainbow striped Babylegs that she loves.

I've made two pairs now, one from Lovesticks Frankensock (yes, I joined the Sweet Sheep's Self-Striping Sock Club -- I think my issues with stripes have become obvious by now):

and one from Artful Yarns Candy in Bubblegum:

Basically same pattern; the combination of ribbings is stolen from Nancy Bush's Madder Rib Socks, in Knitting Vintage Socks, and there are some increases along the leg, and a picot-ish bindoff on top.

So, the hard part for me with child knits is whether the child likes them. She loves both pairs as armwarmers. But screams that the first are "too tight!" if we try to apply them to her legs. The Babylegs have a degree of elasticity that can't be achieved in handknitting. In some sense the legwarmers are big enough; they fit on my arms comfortably, and are snug like socks on her. I wondered if the wool was the problem, which was why I switched to something as wildly different as the soft, nubbly, mostly cotton and slightly elastic Candy for the second pair. I also knit them to be much looser.

She will at least wear the new ones on her legs, which feels like a small victory.

Stash enhancement this weekend: locally raised and handspun worsted-weight alpaca. Each color they had felt different, and this has just unbelieveable body and a little sheen. I'm hoping to get a mesh scarf out of the 250 yards I got... I'm not normally a yarn petter, or an alpaca lover, but in the car on the way home I couldn't stop myself from pulling this out to stroke and admire. (Then again, the project I'd brought along had been making me carsick, so I didn't have anything I could just knit on.)

Happy socks!

• 75 g. (about 350 yards) of 75% wool, 25% nylon sock yarn from Etsy.
• Size 1 (2.5 mm) Addi turbo Magic Loop, 72 stitches at 9 st/inch.
• Toe-up, figure-8 cast-on, modified round toe.
• Moderately frilly bindoff.
• Afterthought heel (decrease pattern self-designed).

The fit's not perfect. They're a little long in the foot. Could be narrower in the ankles, wider in the toes. And I could have done a better job with picking up extra stitches at the corners of the heel, and of handling the last few rounds of the the heels.

But they feel wonderful on the foot (and in the shoe). Soft and snug. And I'm so happy with the little targets on the heels and the overall continuity of the striping—afterthought is the right way to do the heels for yarn with narrow stripes.

They were fun to knit. I love the stripes—these socks will get worn! But as I knit I maintained a continual interior dialog (what? you don't yell at other people inside your head?) with the dyer, always rooting for the wide stripes to be wider. Some of the orange stripes made it past five rows; others petered out at three and a half. One poor little red stripe was barely a row wide.  I tried to make the socks close to identical twins, but the yarn didn't play nice enough for that (see the match at the ends of the toes? and the variation in the width of the first few stripes?). The first heel got inserted into a gray stripe, but the second went into a red; the first sock ended on a big grey stripe, the second on a narrow, so I had to splice in a little extra grey yarn to finish the bindoff.

I'll tell you more about the heels and toes later on. This lovely yarn (the blue/green/brown stuff at the bottom of the entry) is going to get made into a similarly constructed but more carefully considered pair, which I'm going to work top-down—more control over where I put the heel, since it's not constrained by the foot length. Plus I want to try having the heels and toes be constructed very symmetrically: both decreased, instead of one increased, one decreased.