Regular readers may remember I mentioned a while ago that I had signed up to an online sock knitting competition “Sock Madness“. This is a timed competition to knit a pair of socks to a specified pattern. You are paired up with another knitter in your division, the pattern is sent out at a specified time then it’s needles up and race to knit the socks quicker than the competition. First to finish and post a picture on the flickr group wins and goes through to the next round.

So far I’m doing well and made it through to Round 3 which started on Wednesday afternoon UK time - I have great problems knowing about the time difference between here and each of my competitors so far who have all been in the US. I go to bed knowing they are still awake and knitting - I think I’m going to wake in the morning and find they’ve finished!

Anway, here’s the socks I’ve knit so far:

Round 1 - Mad Cows by Jennifer Booker Young

Yarn = Opal petticoat shade 1295 and Opal Uni in a sky blue.

Needles - Addi Bamboo 2.5mm dpn’s

Time taken - cast on 11.45am Saturday 10th March, second toe grafted 1.15pm Sunday 11th March (all times GMT)

The pattern is available on the Sock Madness blog here.

This sock is lovely - the pattern was really easy, just repeating stripes of solid and variegated with a short row heel and a flat toe with a kitchener graft. Very comfy to wear.

Round 3 - Madtini by Karin Bole

Yarn - hand dyed Blue Faced Leicester sock weight from the Natural Dye Studio colour “Blossom”. The photo on the left is much truer to the colours - the finished photo was taken under electric light at

Needles - Brittany Birch 3mm dpn’s

Time taken - the pattern for this arrived sometime on the evening of Thursday 22nd March but as this was my birthday I was out having dinner with my DH. I was off work the following day however and so managed to cast on about 9am Friday 23rd March and then finished sock no 2 at about 1.50 am Saturday 24th March (yes I stayed up until nearly 2 in the morning to finish - and this was actually 2.50 British Summer Time as the clocks went forward an hour at 1.00am, so I lost an hour!!!

I think these are my favourite Madness socks so far. The twisted rib on the cuff is really interesting and the simple spirals of looped stitches works brilliantly with the hand-dyed yarn. The heel is eye of partridge and this is the first time I’ve knit this.. but definitely won’t be the last, and the toe is again a flat toe with a kitchener graft.

Round 3 - Painted Madness by Tricia Weatherston

Yarn - Opal Handpainted “Herbstmelodie” colour 1980, this is a limited edition hand-painted yarn which is 75% superwash wool and 25% polyamide (and so machine washable - hooray!). It’s very much an autum leaves colour which makes it odd to be knitting in Spring - but I love autumn colours.

Needles - brand new Brittany Birch 2.5mm dpn’s sent to me by my Sockret Pal, Roo.

Time Taken - pattern arrived about 3pm Wednesday 4th April but I was at work, well technically I was at home but I was working from home which made it worse as I knew my yarn and needles were in the next room calling to me but I had to carry on working! I hadn’t actually decided on a yarn before the pattern arrived, had several to choose from. Finished work at 5pm but didn’t then cast on till about 5.30pm as I had to make a final decision on the yarn and then wind it. Finished 1.50am Saturday 7th April BST - another late night!

This time around I really didn’t think I had any chance, what with being at work on Thursday and then having a Moonwalk training walk that evening. Friday was a public holiday here in the UK (Good Friday) but we are indulging in the traditional British Easter weekend activity of DIY so I spent all day yesterday stripping wallpaper off walls, filling holes with plaster and scraping paint off windowsills - we are trying to get our spare room re-decorated so we can transform it into a child’s bedroom in preparation for our adopting a child/children.

However, my opponent this round, Neecie, emailed me on Thursday afternoon to say she was having to pull out injured….I’m really sorry for her but it did mean I’ve gone through to Round 4. Managed to knit Wednesday evening until I was about halfway down the foot. Completed sock 1 when I got home on Thursday before I went walking. Then cast on sock 2 and knit the cuff. Knit a bit of ribbing when I got up on Friday then the rest of the sock on Friday night after we stopped the DIY.

Not sure about these socks - love the colours and love the points on the cuff, however for me I would like the cuff a little less deep and to knit a little bit of leg between the ribbing and the heel because this would make it fit better with the sort of shoes I tend to wear. The heel is a flap heel which is fine but the toe is a “round toe” which I don’t find very comfortable to wear. Not sure if this is because I have very narrow long toes but to me the round toe looks like the sock has just been grabbed and drawn up like a drawstring bag - it doesn’t follow the shape of my foot like a flat toe or even a star toe…I may well unpick the toes and put a different one on now the competition is done. The photo below illustrates this  I think -

So, more DIY today, here’s the progress we made yesterday, forgot to take a before photo but if you look at the photo on the right - yes that wall is painted in camouflage! Imagine all four walls painted like that! The other walls were covered in wood-chip wallpaper painted in camouflage so we spent yesterday stripping that off.

The white spots everywhere are where we had to take out screws and rawl plugs and then fill the holes in the plaster…yes there really were that many screw holes in the walls! Today we have to sand the walls to get them smooth where we’ve filled and hope to paint the ceiling and put a base coat on the walls. My dad was helping yesterday and my brother is coming over today…. and the weather is lovely outside of course, if I’d planned on gardening it would be raining non-stop.

Enjoy whatever you’re doing this weekend.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, April 7th, 2007 at 10:08 am and is filed under Socks, Home. 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.