It’s hard to believe that I’ve only got four pairs of socks left in my knit through Nancy Bush’s epoch-marking book, Folk Socks. Less surprising is the fact that I’ve put off the three pairs with complex fair isle cuffs until now. (The fourth is one I’ve decided to do in handspun.) It’s not that I don’t love fair isle – I’ve been doing a ton of it lately – but there’s a bit of an initial hump in picking out the colors. In other words, it’s sheer laziness – it’s much easier to cast on and start when you just have to pick a color, not when you have to pull out your entire bin of sock scraps (it’s more of a big bag, but I think it’s impressive, thankyouverymuch) and sock collection to find a color combo that might work. Because goodness knows, I’m not going to buy any new skeins of yarn for the 3 grams of each accent color.
For the Estonian Socks, the main color will be the Wullenstudio color “Bungle in the Jungle” that I’ve been sitting on for ages. The accent colors are two yellow leftovers from the Unique sheep “Verve” gradiance I used for… um… well… something important that I might show you soon. The white is just a bit of leftover happy feet blank, probably from the Greek socks of last fall.
I was all set to go when I looked at the cast on instructions: 92 stitches! What? a third again of what I think of as a reasonable amount of socks stitches. I pulled out my size 0’s. I am not optimistic.
Osborn Fiber Studio 