It’s been rainy and somewhat dreary here, but since it’s summer it feels like you’re walking through hot water when it’s not rain with the absurd level of humidity. I am grateful that we’re getting more rain than last year, because rain seems better than drought and I like to see the plants happy. I would like to request some collective finger crossing that Z’s birthday party this weekend will not be rained out. This is our second attempt. Please cross some fingers for us (when those fingers aren’t busy knitting).

Remedy for the rain? I think a little color will do. I haven’t wrangled Matt to photograph his finished socks, but I’ve moved on knitting-wise to work on the pair for my mom. I last abandoned them shortly after I completed all of the gusset decreases. Here they are almost fully formed. mom socksThe yarn is Zauberball Crazy in color 1537. I tried to put it into two matching balls before I knit it, but it seemed like it was going to be impossible with this kind of yarn.

My usual method is to get out my digital scale that measures grams. Then I weigh the ball before I start. It’s not always exactly as specified on the ball band. This ball was 94 grams instead of 100 specified on the band. Then I start winding the skein onto my ball winder. I keep weighing the unwound portion of the skein until it’s half of the weight. My scale weighs to the 10th of a gram if I’m feeling ultra fastidious about it.

With self-striping yarns like this, I usually go ahead and wind the second half of the skein. Theoretically, this would make it so that the repeats would potentially both start on the outside of the ball.  You can also pull from the center of the portion you didn’t wind, but that can get messy.

Then I unravel a little bit of each ball, looking for the place where they start to match and I cut them to start at that place. Yes, you lose a little bit of yarn. It’s usually not more than a gram or two. I’ve had pretty good success in the past doing this with Opal and Regia sock yarns, like this pair and this pair. For the current pair, it seemed like I would have to sacrifice too much yarn.

I’m glad I didn’t. The fiery red orange swath in the middle of the right leg above doesn’t occur again, as far as I can tell, to use in the other sock. I have another skein of this yarn, so I won’t even try to make it match. Fraternal twin socks are pretty fun too.

mom socks-2Just a bit remains, but it’s plenty for the cuff.

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