FO: Upstream Firefighters

Pattern: Upstream Master Pattern by Cat Bordhi
Yarn: Knit Picks Felici in Firefighter
Needle: Knit Picks fixed circular, size 1
Started: June 21, 2010
Finished: July 17, 2010
Mods: none
Ravel It!

I haven't blogged a finished knit since *gasp* March! Well, what a way to get back into the swing of things. I started these socks in advance of our summer vacation at the end of June. I only intended to get them started so I wouldn't have to cast on in the car, but I ended up almost to the heel turn before we left! I couldn't help it, the yarn and the pattern - simple stockinette foot with a 3x1 ribbed leg - made it quick work. I finished the first sock two days into our week-long vacation, but I couldn't cast on for the second as I chronicled here. Once we returned home and I gave up on the other sock I had started, it took me a mere 10 days to finish up the pair.

I've knit with Felici before and it worked up as I remember. With the way the color changes stripe so quickly and regularly, the knitting was hard to put down; I always wanted to get to the next color. The other pair of socks I knit with this yarn have held up pretty well, so I'm confident these will as well. If I had to pick one thing I didn't like about the yarn, it would be that the gray sections of yarn were tinged with red. I don't know if that's some of the dye wearing off or just red fibers spreading over the rest of the yarn, but it's not noticeable enough to matter.

This was my first time using Cat Bordhi's Upstream Master Pattern. I have used her Riverbed pattern though, which is the same construction except the increases are on the bottom of the foot. I really liked the idea of knitting a different pattern between the increases than was on the foot. It didn't really turn out to be as striking as I thought it would, but I still like it. The Upstream pattern (and Riverbed too) fits my foot really well, so I'll definitely use it again in the future.

You'll notice in the photo that this pair does not match exactly. I wanted to use as much of the yarn as possible (hence the toe-up pattern) and both skeins of yarn didn't start in the exact same spot in the color sequence. The only 'mod' I made with the stripe sequence was to take out a length of yarn before resuming the leg on the second (right) sock. You can see the very top of the heel flap is black; if I had kept knitting, I would have ended up with about one row of black stitches in the middle of the large field of gray right at the ankle. Since there was no pattern to speak of other than ribbing on the leg, I just knit until I was almost out of yarn before casting off. I ended up with less than a yard left over.