Pucker Up and Pull it Out

I awoke this morning to a dense fog. Not the kind that’s usually in my head but the real, outside kind. I love the moistness and quiet of fog. It’s something I really miss about New Orleans but, being on an island, we certainly get our fair share here in Prince Edward County.

Having managed to knit the cuffs with tubular cast-ons, I’ve spent the last couple of evenings working on the Pucker Socks. At the turn of the year, I declared that I would devote the lion’s share of it to color work. I was starting to feel a little guilty about all the cables I’ve been knitting, so when I saw this mosaic stitch pattern over at HarmonicOscillator, I thought it would make a fine contribution to the cause. What a compelling (nay, addictive!) stitch to knit. It is color-work knitting without carrying a float. This particular pattern is immediately rewarding and easy to memorize.

Unfortunately, this sock will be coming out. Not as a result of the pattern but rather of my naive inability to choose yarn colors effectively. As a novice color-knitter, my impulse is to choose background colors that coordinate with the self-striping or color-changing yarn. This is wrong. The background yarn needs to contrast, not coordinate. Inevitably,  the effect of my color-work is lost when the coordinating shade in the color-changing yarn comes up. I’ve got to train myself to choose a solid that is not found at all in the striping yarn. Live and learn.

So, I’ll be finding a window in the pattern drafting this afternoon when I can buzz out to my LYS which, as I found last week, is the best yarn store for miles. Tell you what, though…I won’t be yanking out those cuffs. I’ll just transfer those to stitch holders until I get another brilliant idea…