Completed: Jaywalkers!

A finished pair!View from the top.

When sock yarn explodes...

Socks...or a pair of earwarmers for Mr. Baa Baa?

Pattern: Jaywalkers by Grumperina, from Magknits September 2005
Yarn: Socks that Rock, in color County Clare, mediumweight
Modifications: Short ankles (1 inch of rib, 1 inch of pattern).
Made one more set of decreases at the toe (ended with 24 instead of 28 stitches).
Seemed to find an error(?), although no one seems to mention it elsewhere - before the toe, several stitches are decreased on needles 2 and 3 to get a multiple of 4 stitches - the pattern has you decrease a total of 4 stitches, but I had to decrease 6 to get the right number. Weird?
Finally - I made a minor error that I decided to simply keep doing. I ended the ankle on round 2 instead of round 1. Thus, on the gusset, I performed the slipped stitch on the same round as the gusset decreases/round 2. Didn't cause a problem at all.
Recipient: Christmas gift for my mom! The socks fit on my - but very snugly. This is good, as my mom has very small feet (size 5 1/2!) and I have medium size feet (8 1/2). I think they will fit well - perhaps a bit loose, but my mom hates overly tight socks anyway!

This was a fun and very easy to knit pattern, although since everyone except me has knit a pair by now, I'm sure I don't need to tell anyone that! The Socks that Rock was very pleasant to knit with, and much less prone to laddering that some socks yarn I have used (Lorna's Lace, I'm looking at you!). The color was a bit different than what I expected - more bright greens as well as very dark tones - but I'm pleased with how it came out.

Unfortunately, I had a yarn explody incident. Stupidly, I wound the entire hank into one ball (close to 400 yards) instead of two. Close to the end of the first sock, for reasons I don't quite comprehend, the yarn I was pulling from the inside got badly tangled and came out in a massive yarn barf. Attempts to fix it only made things worse. I managed to finish sock 1, and then did sock 2 with yarn pulled from the outside of the ball. I made it, but you can see the remaining yarn in the picture above - it ain't pretty. Well, lesson learned - don't get overzealous with the ballwinder, even if a single giant ball of yarn looks really cool.