In Which the Pirate Has a Gauge Issue.

I’ve been working on a new sock pattern. Here’s a sneak peek (kinda-sorta):

Neat, eh? It’s a twisted stitch pattern that gently waves its way down the leg and foot of the sock. I really like it; I think it works well with the tonal blues of this yarn.

Over the weekend I got down to the toe, and tried it on before grafting, and… hm. It’s way too tight. The stitch pattern looks terribly stretched out. I know that twisted stitches can pull the fabric in, but it shouldn’t have been this much. So I measured my gauge on the stockinette sole of the sock, and came up with ten stitches per inch.

Ten? I usually get somewhere between 9 and 9.5 with “standard” sock yarn on size 1 (2.25 mm) needles. Well, that would explain it; that’s nearly half an inch difference over my 8.5″ circumference foot.

A little bit of math, and I’ve concluded that I need to restart these socks over ~70 stitches, rather than 63. I have a couple of choices! The obvious one would be to add another seven stitch repeat, but another option would be to add another stitch to the stockinette rib, for an eight stitch pattern repeat and a total of 72 stitches.

Some less obvious options would be to change up the stitch pattern to make it a little more design-y™ – maybe offset the waves, have them split at the heel flap and go down the gusset, that sort of thing.

I’m annoyed, but that’s part of the fun of designing, right? Trying stuff, figuring out what works and what doesn’t, ripping back, trying again, and making it better the next time.