Socktacular Saturday: (Crap) Monkey Socks

The July shipment of The Purple Sheep sock club arrived just in time for the start of July. This is part of the reason I was I pushing so hard to get the BFF and Twinkleberry socks done by the end of June. These, and another pair of socks, are going on the needles this weekend so I had to finish whether I wanted to or not.

This shipment had Lorna's Laces yarn in it with a special colorway dyed exclusively for Loopy Yarns which is located in downtown Chicago. It's a beautiful mix of dark purple and dark brown. This lovely yarn will be used to make the pattern Monkey by Cookie A. Yay! Another pattern with an easy repeat. This is a good thing since the second pattern I plan to cast-on (which I will talk about another time) is a "tad" more difficult. Think charts! Lots and lots of charts.

Ok, but back to Monkey.

Thus far, I've only knit the cuff and one round of the repeat. I laughed when I saw the directions for a twisted rib cuff. Essentially, what a twisted rib stitch is a stitch were you K1, P1. However, when you K1 you do so through the back loop instead of the front. Now it's really no big deal in the scheme of things, but for me it is - a bit. See, when I first started knitting back in January 2007 I was making my knit stitches through the back loop instead of the front. This wasn't pointed out to me until May 2008 when I joined my first knitting group. Yep, that's right! All my fantastically AWESOME baby blankets made from January 2007 - May 2008 were made incorrectly. (If you have one hold on to it! They will be a rare collectors item one day when I'm all famous and such in the knitting community. : P)

Seriously speaking, it was an honest mistake and as soon as it was brought to my attention I changed my ways. However, with this project I have already found myself not wanting to knit the cuff ribbing through the back loop. Now, I can't imagine I haven't done a twisted rib cuff in the past and for anyone who has knit this pattern one row of the repeat include the direction of "tbl" - knit through the back loop, but for some reason this project has brought back memories of when I knit through the back loop all the time and had me concerned that I would somehow "fall off the wagon" and go back to knitting that way all the time. Ok . . .ok, maybe that is a bit extreme. I just don't want to get into bad habits again.

Another things this pattern has brought to light is my ability to read the pattern just by looking at the yarn and understand how and why the combination of knits, purls, yarn overs and decreases have the effect they do. I'm sure I've had this ability for longer than I realize, but this is just making it more crystal clear. It's kind of cool thing to understand and makes the process easier to some degree.

One last thing about this project and then it will be time for me to get back to work on it . . . I have to admit one of the reasons I like this pattern so much is due to the fact that I can call these socks my "Crap Monkey Socks." I mean it was bound to happen that one day I would get around to naming a project after my favorite saying.

Until later . . .