Knitting Fantasy Land

The Bruins are sucking tonight; after the first period, the radio guys were agreeing that it was a new low.

I'm still coughing; I went to the movies and instead of popcorn, I had cough drops.

So! Let's talk about knitting and pretend the other things aren't happening! Here we go:

Welcome To Knitting Fantasy Land!

There are two items to discuss in KFL this week: the Wingspan scarf, and the sock-in-progress.

I haven't washed-and-blocked the scarf yet, but the knitting is finished. It took just over a week, and I enjoyed it immensely: nice simple pattern, fun result. In the end, I didn't have quite enough yarn for the final rows (as I would have had if I'd stopped after eight triangles instead of nine), but I like how it looks anyway. I laid it out for a photo shoot, and look, I had help!

Hmm, what's this?

Okay, I'm ready!

Blocking what?

What could be cuter than me?

I did manage to get one feline-free shot. You can see on the left how much yarn remained.

A year ago, I was using this yarn to make socks, and the first one was too small, so I sadly ripped it out. (I also tried a shawl pattern that immediately got put aside.) Before I ripped, though, I was much puzzled at how dark the sock seemed to be coming out. If you go back to the skein, you can see that it had quite a bit of yellow:
but in the sock, not so much.
I found this very puzzling. Now, I am validated. If you look at the Wingspan, you see that one end has a fair bit of yellow:
And the other doesn't! The inside of the skein is markedly different. Ah-ha! I was not imagining things. How comforting.

Where did the thing go? I wasn't done playing with it.

Now the sock. This is the one I asked for opinions on last week. It was done to here, but I was running low on yarn. (This photo also shows why really dark jeans are not a good idea around my house, in case you were wondering why I tend to choose the lighter washes.)

I thought Leslie's idea of finishing the toe with other sock yarn was an excellent one, and knit on for a bit, but then I had second thoughts (or, by this time, ninth thoughts) and on Saturday evening I paused again. I contemplated ... and while I was looking things over, I saw the peril of sock yarn with really good stitch definition.
See that?

It's not the lighter stitch that's the problem, it's that the line breaks just below it. That should be a straight line, but it shimmies. I seem to have messed up my decreases on the beach. It's not a deal-breaker in itself--my feeling about perfection in socks is that they're just going to end up on my feet anyway--but in this case, where I was already thinking of frogging, it tipped the balance.

So, back past the heel and removed ten rows (two pattern repeats) from the leg for some extra yarn.

And by Sunday afternoon, I was back past the heel.

I have since finished the decreases (I think they look better this time, but to be honest I haven't examined it too closely), and am close to back where I was when I frogged. It's amazing how quickly it goes when I'm not working on something else! I am strenuously resisting the urge to cast on another Wingspan, though I very much want to. Different colors! Longer rows? Heavier yarn? The possibilities are endless! Who wants one for Christmas?