After a couple of months struggling with these Fair Isle socks, there’s light at the end of the tunnel (and it’s not a freight train). All that’s left is to cast off the ribbing of the first sock, complete about 20% of the other sock and then block both.

I won’t mention how many times I redid these toe-up socks to get them to fit properly. While at the NwRSA conference I was showing some classmates the other pair and mentioned I was going to rip the yarn down to the toe and heard gasps. I just sighed and mentioned that they didn’t fit. Besides, one reason I love knitting is because I control the project and if I want to redo it, I can.

This time I added four more stitches at the toe and then four more before starting the leg. The first three bands after the heel do not have increases while the two upper purple bands have 4 increases just before and after the design within the band (two in the back of the leg and one at each side).

I’m hoping to wrap these up this week and move on to my next project, Jade Starmore’s Firebird Cardigan.

Actually this week I got a bit of a head start by winding a skein of each color and clipping a sample for a home-made color card. After doing this, I transformed the black and white chart into a color version using a cross-stitch program called Pattern Maker. Now I’m all set to start the swatch.

Sorry, I didn’t get a chance to write up my class notes. I was too busy knitting. Maybe I’ll get around to it this week.