Rainbow Striped Socks

Let's be real: rainbows are awesome.  When I found out that Knit Picks had started making a rainbow colorway for Felici, I instantly ordered some.  It's taken a while for me to use the yarn because it is just so perfect.  Any knitter, sewer, spinner, or other crafter knows the type: something that is just so awesome that you don't want to use it.  You just want to take it out every once in awhile and pet it, then put it back where it belongs.

I finally used this yarn last November, when I started these socks.  Usually, I am a monogamous knitter.  If I start another project, the first probably won't get finished.  These are an exception!

I started them around Thanksgiving of last year and knit on them off and on through December.  Christmas presents took priority, so I stopped for a couple weeks to finish them.  I even took these socks on the Most-Terrifying-Plane-Ride-of-My-Life, but didn't knit because I was busy holding on to the armrest like it would save me in the event of falling out of the sky. 

When doing a Stash Reorganization a couple weeks ago, I found the half-finished first sock and started knitting on it again.  Yesterday, the final stitch was knit, and final end woven in.

The pattern is Skew, which is free from Knitty (here's the Ravelry link).  I knit the pattern once before with a beautiful hand-painted yarn.  This time around, I wanted to do stripes of some sort.  If you've seen the beautiful Noro scarves, you know that a striped yarn looks fantastic when paired with a solid.
 

I wrote about these socks on their Ravelry page, which you can see here.  Ravelry is great for keeping track of progress, especially if you happen to put a project down for a long time. 

Above, you can see that they are almost perfectly identical.  Yay!  I commend the knitters who can make not-quite-identical socks, but I simply can't muster the will-power!  Each time I knit a pair of something, I make sure to start at the exact same spot in the yarn and compare throughout.  

Here's a picture of the first sock being blocked.  Blocking really gets these socks into the correct shape.  I had two problems with this pattern, however:

1. A little too tight across the heel/ankle.  This isn't noticeable once they are on, but getting into and removing them is a major task.  I'm really hoping they stretch out a little with wear.
2. On both socks, I had the incorrect number of stitches after the heel was formed, when it came to the mini gusset.  I know it wasn't an issue with the pattern because there was a difference in stitches between the two socks.  I need to work on keeping track of what row I'm on, apparently!

 Today I started my next pair of socks, and am hoping that it will take less than 10 months to complete this time around!