Bad sock luck #2

This bad sock luck is due largely to my willingness to believe everything will turn out fine despite my doubts.

(please note that the red in this picture is more intense than in real life)

Last month I wanted to knit a pair of Nancy Bush's Highland Scottische Kilt Hose from Folk Socks. A trip to the yarn store yielded no nice plain sock yarn, though I did come home with a couple of skeins of ShiBui Sock yarn in a great red colour. I hadn't tried this yarn before and it was a new addition to the yarn store's stock and I was weak.

In the skein the yarn looked like a semi-solid so I decided that I would knit myself a red pair of the Kilt Hose using the ShiBui. As I knit I discovered that in fact the yarn produces stripes of lighter and darker red. At this point I convinced myself that even though the sock was pretty patterned and the red pretty eye catching some subtle striping would not make my knee socks too loud and distracting.

I kept knitting and decreasing according to the pattern until I realized that what were subtle stripes at the top of the sock were turning into pools of colour at the bottom. I do understand how self-striping yarn works so this shouldn't have come as a surprise but for some reason it did. At this point I was forced to admit that red knee high socks with yarn-over patterns, stripes and pooling were going to be unwearable. It took me nearly knitting a whole skein to realize this, though. Sigh.

So this work has now been ripped out and the yarn confined to stash. Luckily I did find a more appropriate yarn with which to knit my Kilt Hose and tomorrow I will show you the result.