A bad case of stripes

On the left, a Jaywalker in Madelinetosh sock yarn in Peony. On the right, a plain 64 stitch stockinette sock in STR in Hard Rock. I have no idea why I suddenly had to find a sock for both of these yarns, but I had to and I had to yesterday. (Seriously, I was up until midnight because the Hard Rock was going to behave if I had to stay up all night.)

It took me ages to find a pattern and needle size to get both of these yarns to behave reasonably well. My first attempts resulted in socks that were pink on one side and brown (or gray) on the other. Not exactly what a knitter wants to see.

The Hard Rock was especially worrisome after trying and failing with a Jaywalker. Eventually, I ended up with 64 stitches on size 1 needles as the magic bullet. I'm knitting the Madelinetosh on size 1s as well. I'm a bit worried about that, because that yarn is thinner than the STR. However, the Jaywalker pattern produces an extremely firm fabric, so I'm hoping it will be fine. I'll probably go down to 0s on the foot and hope for flashing rather than pooling.

So much for finishing a few items before casting on for more. At least they are socks and not sweaters. And, I did say I'd knit 10 pairs of socks this year...