Monkey Business

My spinning and knitting have been largely on hold the last few days. I have been devoting most of my time to house cleaning in preparation for my mother's visit. This really boils down to doing a bit of cleaning and organizing here and there and spending most of my time avoiding cleaning ad organizing by playing around with Ravelry. Oh the wonderful time suck that is Ravelry.

I did cast on a sock a couple of days ago. I thought I'd see what the big deal was with the Monkey pattern. I had a skein of Jitterbug that I had picked up in Montreal and I was itching to get something cast on with. I tend to avoid swatching for socks (unless I'm designing them myself) since I find it easier to just knit a bit of the sock and try it on for fit. So far I have this:



I knit this using my favorite set of 2.75 mm needles that I have used to produce nearly all of my socks to date. I have decided that this sock is going to be too wide and so it destined to be frogged later today. Instead I am going to go up to 3 mm needles and cut the pattern down to a 12 stitch repeat from a 16 stitch repeat. So far so good:



I could have switched yarn and stuck with the original pattern but I think the Jitterbug is destined to be made into Monkeys one way or another. I originally bought it in Montreal because I thought I'd need some sock yarn for the return trip. As it turned out I still had my nephew's socks to work on on the trip back. Before I realized that the nephew socks would keep me entertained, I turned the Jitterbug skein into a Jitterbug ball. Lacking a nostepinne I made do with what I had at hand:



So like I said, this yarn is destined to be Monkey socks.