Bowties Are For Dorks

Dear Sir, I wish to complain on the strongest possible terms about knitted ties. It's just a bad idea all around. If you try to knit one in stockinette stitch to get a nice smooth surface, it's going to curl like mad, so you have knit it in garter stitch, which just ends up looking awful. I suppose you could double knit a stockinette tube, but when you went to tie the darn thing, you'd end up with a knot the size of a grapefruit under your chin! Just take a look at this poor chap. Who wears a tie with a denim shirt...shit, who the heck wears denim shirts anymore?!

And don't get me started on knitted bowties. I'm against bowties to begin with (unless you're wearing a tuxedo), knitting one only makes it worse. I don't know about you, but I think it would be extremely hard to tie a knitted bowtie. Maybe if you knitted it in a really slippery yarn like rayon or polyester, but then would it stand up? I've already thought about this way too much. Besides, anyone who wears a bowtie without a tuxedo just ends up looking like a dork:



Ok, time to bring the level of this post back to neutral. I'm making nice progress on my black cabled socks. Sorry, no new photos, but I've turned the heel, worked the gussets and started the foot. Unfortunately it's pretty obvious that I'm going to run out of yarn before I can reach the toes. So why am I still going? Well, I tried it on shortly after I finished the gussets and had a hard time getting the leg of the sock over my heel. I'm 99% sure I'm going to frog and add in another cable repeat to ease the tightness of the leg, but I want to know how 5 repeats fit my foot before I do.

If you had told me 2-3 weeks ago that I'd be frogging an almost complete sock, I probably would have cried, but I went into this project with the right mindset. I knew that it was a test pattern and that things might not work out since it was created from scratch. I think if this had been knit from an existing pattern, I probably would have been mad at the pattern by now, put the socks aside and started something else. I've learned a lot while knitting this sock - and I still have a lot more to learn - but I'm really glad I did it.

Speaking of knitting socks, I placed an order from KnitPicks Wednesday that has lots of sock yarn in it. Yay! I also ordered Sensational Knitted Socks like I said I was going to and some yarn to finish my wife's Fibonacci Ribs sweater that I started two years ago now... Let's just hope the dye lot matches closely enough or I'm going to spending lots of time in the frog pond next week. I have plans to make Grumperina's Jaywalker socks with some Memories Cape Cod and Smores as well as some argyle socks with more Palette. Those should be interesting, I'm planning to knit the leg flat for the intarsia (I had a bad experience with stranding) so I'm trying to decide where I want the seam. Also, I was wondering if I could come up with a sort of vertical kitchener stitch to avoid the ridge that mattress stitches creates. I'll have to knit some swatches and give it a go.