Updated photos, since the original ones are not very good. These show both my socks and the pattern. As you can see they are quite tight, The result of using a smaller needle to get the pattern to work! Possibly I should have made a larger size. Though they have turned out comfortable to wear and snug. I am just hoping my toe nails do not poke through because right now I still cannot bend and my nails have grown very long over the last few weeks. I think it should be ok though since I am still stuck at home and not wearing shoes.
Not the best photo I am afraid and apparently I never even put my socks on straight, but the best when I am still recovering. Not long to go now. I have a meeting with my consultant on 23rd and hopefully after that I have no precautions ( keeping my hip at an angle less than 90 degrees, bending forward etc etc) and with luck I should also be allowed to drive again.
These WATG socks:
I like the leopard-skin pattern very much though I still think the kit is overpriced and not in the least flexible.
Further to
my previous issues - there is only enough patterned yarn for this size of sock which is a skimpy sized 39 or UK size 6. I am actually a UK 5.5 in shoes!
I would have had to have very large blue toes to get a larger size so yes very lucky there I think to be the correct size for this kit!
Doing the WATG recommended after thought heel would not, I think, alter this very much if at all.
There is tons of blue for the toes though so I assume that's what you have to do for the larger sizes. As
previously mentioned I find the top of the sock so the ankle bit far too short. Shorter by 3-4cm than the usual Winwick Mum patterns and by around 12cm shorter than I like to make for myself. I like longer socks. See below for my choice of sock length!
There is also this waste bright yellow yarn you get at the start, middle ( where the second sock starts ) and end of the ball and there is just too much of that. Lang do a similar thing and have a bit of pure white yarn to differentiate between the two socks in the single ball but they waste far less yarn. Their separation part is a metre or less in length and works fine. You would have to be pretty stupid not to understand the white bit marks the second sock. I honestly think the WATG kits are wasting far too much yarn and I suspect most people who make these just throw it away.
Considering WATG market themselves as a sustainable company with lots of very nice recycled yarns I think this is terrible. I really was drawn to this company because of their recycled yarns I have to admit though other than this kit, which was a birthday present, I have never bought any due to they are so very expensive. But I do like the idea.
Instead I tend to buy "old" as in sold on Ebay or in Charity shops ( "Thrift" shops in some countries) from peoples lofts and maybe 1970s, 1980s and even 1950s yarns. That gives a viable sustainable alternative, for now anyway, for people like me who have limited money. And most of what I have bought this way has been good quality and quite beautiful!
So these sock kits: well I have lots of this yellow yarn and also the rest of the blue toe yarn and I do not like wasting yarn so I decided to start another pair. After all I have some sock yarn available sitting next to me though only this one ball at the moment. I cannot go in my loft which is where my stash is so cannot access the rest so this will have to do the job. Its a nice colour and will cheer up my winter.
This is WYS Signature 4ply yarn in Summer Sunset:
The yellow cast on and top stripes are the waste yarn from one WATG sock and I have even more I did not use. Since I have 3 pairs of these WATG sock kits ( so 2 pairs left to knit) I am going to have lots of this bright yellow.
The blue heel is the blue from the toes of my leopard skin socks. I considered a striped heel with yellow stripes but will save the rest for a different pair since its the same yellow they use for all 3 pairs so I will have lots of bright yellow edges or stripes in the coming months I think. I might do yellow toes? Not sure. Maybe they would be best in blue. I have yet to decide. You can see I still have lots of the blue left and this is just the one sock so I have double this.
Ah one other thing, to get the leopard print to work ( well almost!) I ended up using a 2.25mm needle. Really I suspect it might work better on a 2mm needle but I have bad arthritis in my hands and a swan neck ( deformed) finger so I really could not use a 2mm needle due to the pain so I made do with the almost ok leopard skin spots with the 2.25mm.
I actually started knitting when I read on an arthritis forum that knitting works better than Physio if you have the issues I have with my hands. I never would have believed when I was younger I could knit something like socks on such tiny needles. Its actually easier than using larger needles and knitting a jumper though due to the weight of bigger items. Anyway it still hurts, especially when you first pick the knitting up, but an hour or so a day is better than most physio workouts - and my Rheumatology consultant agrees!
But a 2.25mm needles seems far different to using a 2.5mm needle. It does not sound so different but pain-wise its massive. There has been a very unexpected upside to this though. When I went back to knitting on a normal 2.5mm needle to do this pair of WYS socks ( using the Winwick Mum basic sockalong pattern) I have unexpectedly found I am knitting this so fast. I do not think I had sped up at all but the ease of using the 2.5mm needle has meant I have in 2 days knitted what normally takes me 2-6 months! Wow!
Its not like I am speeding a long but its just so easy and I have got so used to the pain of the 2.25mm that these bigger needles are a dream and I can knit for longer than usual so the sock is growing so fast. I also an stuck recovering of course! Its keeping me busy.
Well, assuming these get finished before next summer I will show you how they go ina few weeks if I continue to knit at my current rate.
As for my other 2 pairs of WATG socks. I think maybe I will join the two pairs together and do stripes of different coloured leopard-skin and see if that makes for an interesting sock. It will at the least make them longer. I have not decided really how to deal with them as yet. At least I now know what sized needle will give reasonable results.
Have a lovely week, see you again soon
Bracken
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