Friday Knitting Blog (07/08/2011)

Hmm, Blogger looks all different. Interesting. Anyway,

Today's project is 1-1/3 socks. I'll call it a sock and a half once I've turned the heel on sock #2, probably after I post this. Last week, I wanted to finish sock #1 in this pair, and that mission was accomplished. And for those who pay attention to my socks and are wondering when the hell I started knitting socks this long, the answer is that it's pretty recent. I'm less bored with the leg knitting than I used to be, and I like using as much of my yarn as possible. 

In many ways, these socks are like the last socks I made; the pattern is basically the same, but I've used a different bind off for the top. Hence pictures of bound off sock-tops. This sock, the Cherry Cola Socks (name of the project on Ravelry) is bound off using Jeny's Surprisingly Stretchy Bind Off (YouTube link to Cat Bordhi demonstrating) which was first published in Knitty Fall 2009 (link to Knitty article). I'd been hearing about it on Ravelry for a while but hadn't used it because I've had really good results with The EZ (Elizabeth Zimmermann) Sewn Bind Off (another YouTube demo). But as in the rest of life, in knitting, it's really good to know more than one way to accomplish what you've set out to. 

This is the Cherry Cola bind off (JSSBO as it's known in shorthand).

And this is the Moonlit bind off (EZ Sewn BO).

I was actually pretty surprised at how much I like the JSSBO as compared to the EZ. (I rather expected to be unmoved by it.) It looks great, and while the EZ has enough stretch, the JSSBO is crazy stretchy, plus it doesn't require me to get out a tapestry needle or guess how much yarn the BO is going to take. I usually overestimate what a sewn BO takes and end up wasting yarn, which I find annoying. 

There's a matching cast-on by the same woman, Jeny Staiman, which I'm going to try on the next pair of socks that I knit from the top down. Which is to stay my next pair of socks; I've done 3 toe-up in a row, counting the Skews, so it's time to switch back up a little.

This week's goal, then, is to finish Cherry Cola #2, pick yarn and pattern, and start a new pair of socks.