After I explained to my son how yarn chicken works, he wanted to know if there's a prize for winning. Absolutely -- you get a pair of socks that doesn't have an inappropriate contrast color at the top of one cuff. And a huge sense of relief.
I went into this project fairly sure that I'd be playing yarn chicken by the end, but the colors of the yarn were perfect for the pattern, which called for 350 yards. Hawthorne comes in 357 yard skeins, so I knew I'd be cutting it close but was willing to take the risk. Just before finishing the first sock, I glanced at the yarn requirements again. The large size calls for 375 yards. Oops.
For my non-knitting blog readers, yarn requirements aren't the same as fabric requirements. You know exactly how many 2 1/2" strips or squares you can get out of a yard of fabric. With knitting, it's not that exact. Slight differences in gauge will use up more or less yarn. A skein may have a few more or less yarns than the label says it does. Having big feet doesn't help either.
Knowing all of that, I gambled and I won and I'm happy. I could have left off one repeat of the lace patterns but this is for a knitalong and I'm pretty sure that would (or should) have disqualified me. My half inch of ribbing along the top edge is definitely a scant half inch, but I finished the pattern as written. And did I mention that I managed it in five days?
These socks were fun.
The pattern is Charlie McGee, inspired by Firestarter. I've seen the movie once or twice, but I really loved the book, which I read shortly after it came out. Another family member had checked it out from the library and I could only read it when she wasn't reading, which stretched out the suspense like you wouldn't believe. We were out on the boat, so it was probably only a couple of days from start to finish, but I was so hooked by the story that it was torture to only be able to read it in chunks.
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