Last night I finally made it along to join the girls of the George & Dragon Knitting Regulars, thanks to everyone for making me feel welcome.

A very pleasant evening sitting knitting in the Pub, the landlord now refers to the group as his “knitting regulars” and asked if they had been knitting themselves some new members as there appeared to be more people than previously!

I had only intended staying a short time as I was late out of work yesterday evening and had only called in at home very briefly to grab something to eat and go….however 2 hours seemed to go by without me realising and suddenly it was almost 10.30 and time to leave.

I took the second of my Monkey socks with me to finish and knit almost to the end, finishing it off today. Then I discovered that it is much bigger than the first one I knit and I am at a loss to know why! I am sure I knit the first sock exactly to the pattern and so did the same for this second one however, it looks as though my tension is much, much looser on the second sock. I can’t think that I would have used smaller needles and my tension never varies.

Looking at the pictures I posted of the first sock in progress it looks as though I was knitting on aluminium dpn’s, which makes it almost certain I knit on the needles as given as I only have 2.5mm aluminium dpn’s - my only 2.25mm are birch.

Which brings me to the only conclusion which seems likely, the second sock was knit on bamboo 2.5mm dpn’s and I can only think that my tension on bamboo’s is looser than on aluminium - does this seem likely?

The difference is about 1stitch over 2 inches (sock 1 has 16 sts and sock 2 15 sts over 2″) the second sock feels “thinner” the fabric just isn’t as dense. I’m trying to decide if I can block the difference out or if it isn’t noticeable once I’m wearing them…..I really don’t want to unpick a whole sock.

I did make one change to the pattern as set when I knitted the first sock, which I forgot about with the second however…I changed the toe from a flat toe to as star of three points toe….whoops, guess I’ll have to redo that anyway. I think that may have added to the impression that the sock was looser as well as it doesn’t decrease as quickly

It also looks like I may not have knit as many rows in the heel flap and possibly not picked up and therefore decreased as many stitches in the gusset. The heel looks shorter on sock 1 and you can see that the pooling of blue on sock 1 (on my right foot above) is not as big as the pooling on sock 2.

I have put them aside to think and have now cast on for a pair of socks for my friend, Emma. She came to a dinner party we had for J’s birthday on Saturday and picked out some yarn from my sock yarn sack - Lorna’s Lace Shepherd Sock in a pink and blue colourway (I’ve lost the band and can’t remember what it was) and a pattern - Fancy Silk Sock from Knitting Vintage Socks.

I think she’s chosen a good combination there and hope to enjoy knitting them.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 7th, 2007 at 12:16 am and is filed under Socks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.