The Anxiety of Freedom

I managed to finish the first Vinnland Sock today. I love it, I had fun, and most importantly of all -- it fits. I'm so much happier this time around and really glad that I stuck with it. I'm even starting to get the pattern semi-memorized so that I don't have to consult the pattern sheet quite so often.

I took this picture out on our deck this afternoon. Two things you should be aware of concerning this deck. First of all, it's dry. For the first time in two weeks. As of this writing, the last time it rained was 24 hours ago. We haven't gone 24 hours without rain in weeks, which is very freaky (as my niece and nephew would say) for this part of the world at this time of year. The second interesting fact about this deck is that it is slated to be replaced by a much safer and hopefully less rot-prone version. Can't wait for that.

One of the great things about toe-up socks is that you have the freedom to knit them as long as you want. With top-down socks, once you've turned the heel, you are committed on the length of the cuff. You're locked in. Not so with toe-up socks -- you just knit until you're happy with the length, you get tired of knitting, or you run out of yarn.

But this toe-up freedom breeds another problem: How do you know when to stop knitting the first one so that you have enough yarn left for the second one? Weighing the yarn would seem to be the answer. One of these days I'm going to get one of those really fancy electronic scales that drug dealers chemists use to weigh things by micrograms, so that I can split a ball of yarn exactly. But I don't have one -- just a kitchen scale that weighs ounces to the tenth of an ounce. It works okay, but it doesn't measure finely enough, and it doesn't do grams. I need something that does grams.

This time around I stopped knitting about where I wanted to. Actually, I wanted to stop earlier, thinking I had already used half the yarn, but I forced myself to keep knitting until the cuff was at least as long as the foot. I then tossed the sock onto my non-metric scale: 1.8 ozs. Would the remaining ball of yarn weigh more or less? I held my breath, put the ball on the scale, and breathed a sigh of relief: 1.9 ozs.

One of these days my luck will run out. But not today.

Oh, and I ordered some yarn today to make a sweater. For me. It's gonna be crazy cabley.