July Mystery Sock

It's now July, and that means a new mystery sock pattern in the SKA group on Ravelry!

Clue 1 was posted on July 1st and it is a toe-up colorwork sock. The designer suggested using the Turkish cast on which I have not used before so I thought I would try it since the goal of the SKA group is to challenge yourself each month. Well, Wednesday night was very frustrating because I was having major trouble casting on! I tried the Turkish cast on and it came out very loose, so after knitting a couple rounds I ripped it out. I tried it again and did not end up with the right number of stitches on my needles. Then, I dug out my instructions for the figure 8 cast on that I used for the last two pairs of toe-up socks and for some reason I could not get the hang of that even though I found it simple the last time I used it!

So, I took a break and then tried the Turkish cast on again. This time it worked, although I ended up with only 19 stitches instead of the 20 stitches I needed, but instead of ripping it out, I just increased a stitch on the first knit round and it seemed to work out just fine!

My main yarn is Panda Soy in natural ecru. I got this with the gift certificate I won at last year's Knitters' Day Out. The first motif in the mystery socks is cherries, so I needed red and green yarn for the colorwork. I decided to use the poppy red Panda Soy that I had leftover from the May mystery socks, but I was having a difficult time deciding what to use for the green. I did not have any green Panda Soy on hand. I originally wanted to knit these socks in a red, white and blue theme but that didn't work out with the first clue being cherries. I debated about knitting the leaves in blue, but the "blue" Panda Soy I have is really more of a periwinkle purplish-blue so I didn't really think it would work. I looked into ordering green Panda Soy online, but the website I checked was out of stock of the green!

Last night, I started knitting the colorwork section and got to the point where I needed the green yarn. I dug out all Crystal Palace Yarns sock yarn that I have and after considering several possibilites, including some multi-color Panda Superwash, I decided to go with the only green sock yarn in my stash, the single skein of cactus Maizy. I'm a little nervous about this because I tend to knit Maizy on smaller needles than Panda Soy or Panda Cotton, but I decided to just give it a try. So far, it seems to have worked ok.

Here is my mystery sock after completing clue 1:


It would probably look a little better with a darker green, but I think I will probably just stick with the Maizy. This pattern will also involve a fourth color which is supposed to be a dark brown, so the bittersweet Maizy I have should fit the bill.

If nothing else, this mystery sock pattern will be a fun learning experience!

And, it has finally giving me something to blog about!