When kids come to play, the yarn gets put away

We had our nephews for a few days and between the preparation in advance of the siege and their actual occupation, very little knitting was done, and only a little was thought about.

Last night I wrapped up the Sweet Tarts Socks.

Yarn:
Cherry Hill Tree Superwash
Fingering weight
100% Merino

Gauge:
I didn't measure my gauge. (Your thinking this wrap up is helpful, aren't ya!)

Needles:
I used size US2 clover bamboo dpns

Sock Pattern:
I used your basic toe-down sock pattern. I cast on 84 stitches and knit in k4,p3. The knit stitches became alternately a left leaning cable and a snake cable.

At about row 24 I began purl stitch decreases. I decreased one purl stitch in a three stitch section every six rows. I offset the decreases so that the second decrease was on the opposite side of the sock as the last decrease. When I began the heel I had made 12 decreases, turning the p3 section of the rib into a p2 rib. There were then 72 stitches on the needle.

Instead of going right into stockinette right prior to the toe decreases, I knit in seed stitch on the top foot panel for three rows. The toe decreases began on the fourth row using all stockinette.

For some reason I did the toe decrease on the third and fourth stitch from the end of the needle, rather than the standard second and third stitch. I'm thinking the wider gusset created may feel more comfortable on the foot than the narrower gusset of the standard pattern. Or maybe not.

I would like to note that on the foot of the second sock I made a few mistakes on one cable. On a left leaning cable I snake cabled for a few repeats and you know what? I didn't care a whit. Normally I would either frog the rows or just reknit the faulty cable, but with this project I was so done with these socks well before I was physically finally done with these socks, that I made a conscious decision to not give a frig and kept knitting.

This yarn was the second to grace my newly acquired yarn swift and ball winder. I questioned in an early blog entry whether the differently tensioned balls would show weaknesses down the line.

Well they did. The looser guage ball fell apart on me halfway through the foot, whereas the tighter ball kept a facsimile of a shape. So there you go.