This month I was excited to focus on socks, but sadly I wasted a lot of time trying to figure out how to make them. Based on the amount of time I spent knitting, I should have completed at least four or five pairs, yet I only ended up with two pairs.

The main problem was that I really, really wanted to make the Widdershins socks by Brooke Chenoweth Creel from the Summer 2006 issue of Knitty so I was forcing myself to knit way more tightly than I normally would to match gauge. I ended up with the correct stitch gauge for the pattern, so the circumference of the sock fit well. When I got to the heel, though, there was nothing I could do to fit my foot in the sock — the opening was too small. I ripped the heel out and tried again, making probably six different heels, none of which fit. It turned out that the extra tight knitting really messed up my row gauge so it was impossible to get a nice heel from the given instructions, or any reasonable heel pattern, for that matter. I finally admitted defeat and decided to figure out how to make a basic toe-up sock that would actually fit. My takeaway from this experience was that sometimes row gauge is really important (like for socks!).

I ended up concocting my own design for toe-up socks that fit my feet by cobbling together advice and techniques from all over the internet. The essential methods I used were Judy’s magic cast on and short-row heel shaping (I’ll save the details for a future post). Both pairs were made from Plymouth Happy Feet sock yarn in a variegated blue color. The first pair (60 g) was straight stockinette throughout so I could focus on the shaping for my feet. On the second pair (40 g) I got adventurous and modified the cable pattern from Widdershins to work with my stitch count (I had 48 stitches versus the pattern’s 54). This pair only went to the ankles since I was running out of yarn.

I also finished up the Loops & Threads Impeccable yarn (76 g) I have been using to make a poncho. As I predicted in June, this was not quite enough to complete the poncho so I had to purchase more yarn (gasp!) to finish it. I definitely think it was worth breaking my no-yarn-purchasing rule, since otherwise the poncho would have been a really weird size and therefore totally useless. I finished all the knitting for the poncho in July and now just need to stitch the two pieces together and add fringe!

My total yarn usage this month was 176 g, 3.52% of the 5000 g I started the stash challenge with.

YEAR-TO-DATE STATISTICS

• 63 different yarns remaining
• 3574 g remaining (71.48%)
• 18 projects completed in 2015