Sweet Madness

Round 4 started off with a bang!  Usually, we get a kind of warning message and some time to gather our thoughts and tools before the pattern arrives.  But this time, the moderators decided to have a little fun with us poor knitters, and just gave us about five minutes warning and then all of sudden I was reading a pattern while walking home…I’m not the best pedestrian.

This time we were knitting Sweet Nuttins, by Adrienne Fong.  As we advance in the Madness, we advance in complexity, so of course, these are cabled, beaded, and have a lace panel on both sides.  And, continuing with the apparent theme of “interesting” starts, these have a slight ruffle at the top…which means a HUGE cast on (especially in the large) in, what else, a new to me style (German Twisted Cast On).  Some how I got that all worked out before I had to leave for trivia, and I was off to the races.

My preparation and progress shots.  Anthropomorphic bacon stitch marker makes everything better!  Also, that yarn would not photograph the same colour twice. 

For whatever reason, this pattern just really clicked for me, and by Saturday afternoon, I had a sock (I named her Princess Anna).  The pattern gave you the option to mirror the second sock, for symmetry, which I thought might slow me down, but here we are Monday night and I’ve got me a Queen Elsa to go with my Princess.

It seems like I think this every round, but these might be the prettiest socks I’ve ever knit.  They are made out of Knit Picks Stroll in the Wonderland Heather Colourway.  The beads are unidentified stash. 

These were a delight to knit, I am definitely going to seek out more of Adrienne’s patterns post-Madness.  I was scared of doing the lacy gusset, but it really made a part of the sock that I generally hate much more interesting.  I think I might be learning that I like a certain complexity to my knitting.  Oh dear.