Fun With Stripes

I got myself some self-patterning yarn to play with (Lion Brand Magic Stripes), and decided to make some fingerless gloves for my boyfriend. The pattern is based on Marnie MacLean's Hooray For Me Gloves, but seeing that this is yet another episode of Kea Never Gets the Gauge Right, I had to do math to adjust the size. Ms. MacLean's yarn required size 2 needles; mine were about size 3. However, since my boyfriend has such large hands, I only had to reduce the number of stitches by 10. Simple enough.



Not so for the socks. I used the pattern that came with the yarn, and soon discovered that even though my needles were a bit smaller than recommended, my feet were still a whole lot smaller than an "adult size medium", whatever that means. (They were huge!) I also found that the tricky thing about gauging socks is the stretch. Rectangular gauge swatches weren't much help to me, I had to make a tube and try it on to see if it was tight enough to stay up, but not so tight it would cut off my circulation. I also wanted to extend the socks from mid-calf to the knee (what's the point of heavy duty wool winter socks if they don't keep your legs warm?) and so had to figure out how much to decrease from my calves down to my ankles. It took three tries, but I got it.