Finished!

 

Last night I finished the black socks!  I am so happy to have these finished, I cannot even express my happiness on the blog!  This is the one and only pair of black socks I will ever knit.  They are Mickael’s.  He will wear them, which is the only reason I finished them.  The pattern is Go With The Flow, which is an easy pattern, and I think it’s unisex so it works for anyone’s sock, depending on the yarn color.  It’s also based on ribbing, so the socks are super stretchy and if you’re knitting socks for a gift and can’t try things on, these should work out just fine as long your sizing is somewhere in the ballpark of their actual feet.  What you might not have noticed, is that the socks start with a zig on one sock and start with a zag on the other sock, so they are mirror images of each other.  Whether or not it was crucial that I do this on black socks, I don’t know, but I did it.  It’s also really hard to get pictures of texture on black socks - pretend it’s there, for me.

There were two problems with these socks:  the color and the yarn.  The color was my fault, I picked it.  I did eventually figure out that I shouldn’t knit these socks at night, even with a good light.  The yarn however, I was not happy with.  (Please understand that the next bit is completely my opinion.  Some people may adore this yarn.  That’s great if you do.  I don’t.  If you have used this yarn and like it, please tell me what you’ve used it for - I have most of a skien left.)  I used Berroco Ultra Alpaca Fine.  The Ultra Alpaca Fine has a different fiber blend than Ultra Alpaca (which I love) and Ultra Alpaca Light (which I’ve never tried, but will probably love as much as the worsted weight Ultra Alpaca).  The Ultra Alpaca Fine is made for socks - they’ve added nylon to the alpaca and wool blend, and it has more twist.  This is fine and a good idea in general, but in practice, this particular yarn just didn’t work.  It splits like crazy and drove me nuts.  Once it’s knit, it feels fine, but it doesn’t have a lot of elasticity while knitting it, so I felt like I was constantly re-tensioning it on my hand.  It took me most of the first sock to figure out what I didn’t like about it, or I would have switched yarns months ago.  Now that they’re done, I think they’ll be great socks and wear well, but it was a battle getting the yarn knit into socks.

I will happily knit navy blue socks or charcoal gray or even dark chocolate, but this is my one and only pair of black socks.  Never again!  (Watch, Caleb will toodle in and ask for black socks now.)