Some Sock Knitting Woe

An almost finished pair of yellow cabled hand knit socks.

Gather round (digitally of course) while I tell a tale of woe and sock knitting misfortune. At the center of it all is this pair of socks which the recipient has dubbed the Celtic Waffle socks because the intricate cables remind her of waffles. I’m inclined to agree.

Now these socks are no strangers to ripping. I was a good chunk of the way into the foot of the first toe-up sock when I realized it was too small. So out it came. The second attempt went much better with a larger stitch count even with the long break I had to take in the middle of the gusset. Things were smooth sailing once I got started again. I finished the gusset, turned the heel, knit two full chart repeats, worked some 2x2 ribbing at the top, and bound off. This first sock is a beautiful thing that took a lot of work, planning, and attention. So, not wanting to lose momentum and or take another six months to finish, I immediately started the second sock.

The inside off my sock knitting project bag holding one in progress sock and too little yarn to finish.

Sock number two was going great. By this point, I was well past the heel and so happy to be knitting this complicated chart for the last time. Then the yarn started to tangle. Obviously the thing to do was to take the yarn out of my project bag, sort it out, and resume knitting. Instead, I pulled out the yarn, and thought, “Where’s the rest of it?” No amount of shuffling through the papers and accoutrements turned up more hidden yarn or a portal to Yarnia. The rest of the cake definitely didn’t jump out and say, “Surprise! Here I am!” Ugh.

There I was holding a sock that needed three more inches before the bind off in one hand and nowhere near enough yarn to do so in the other. That’s when I figured out just how badly I’d messed up this time. And it was such a simple, but absolutely massive, mistake too. Here it is:

I thought the yarn came in 100g skeins because many skeins of fingering weight sock yarn do. This yarn however came in a 115g skein.

So I could put 57.5g toward a sock instead of 50g. But I forgot all of this when figuring out how tall to knit the first sock. So, when I looked at the grams on the scale, I thought I had way more than yarn to work with than I actually did. And I was so excited to just start that I didn’t way weigh the first sock like I usually go when knitting socks from one skein. That would have been an immediate red flag that something was off. How much yarn did that first sock use? 62 grams. Once again, ugh.

The first finished cabled sock that used way more yarn than I expected.

I have already decided that I am not ripping out the first sock. The cable would be okay but the leg would be way too short. The sock is just right aside from that whole used too much yarn thing. That means I need to get more indie dyed yarn whenever the dyer dyes more. I haven’t had any luck finding this base in this color for sale or trade anywhere else either. Now I get to play the waiting game for yarn updates.

Now that I’m stuck waiting instead of gleefully finishing this pair, I’m left trying to figure out how to not make this mistake again. I’ll let you in on a secret: this is the second time I’ve done this. That other pair of socks is still waiting for me to unpick the bind off and rip enough out to match both socks. For the third time, ugh.

The mostly finished sock and the little bit of remaining yarn.

I’ve come up with two things that might help. One, write down how many grams I can put towards each sock in my notes. I keep fairly detailed notes as it is, so this shouldn’t be too hard to remember to do. Two, divide 100g+ skeins in half. I have an accurate scale and scissors so it’s doable. More work upfront (and something I used to do), but better than not having enough yarn to finish a pair or socks.

How do keep your sock WIPs from eating more yarn than you have?