He's a Mean Hombre, He Is

Well, really more ombre than hombre, if you want to be absolutely accurate.



This is Zauberball, the real Zauberball made and distributed (I think) by Skacel. It's a perfectly lovely single with no plying whatsoever, as opposed to the also-named Zauberball which I bought a couple of weeks ago from Only Ewe and Cotton Too at the AKG meeting. That Z is two ply--lovely, but not the same.





Anyway, what does this mean to us? Well, it means that Z (color Cranberry if it matters) is supposed to gently morph from dark red to red and back to dark red with almost invisible gradations. And it does ... except when you stop to put a heel into the sock. Then, if you're unlucky, you get a perfectly gradated heel and ... a vivid, abrupt scar of a color change, right in the middle of the front of the foot. No blending, no gradual ombre-ing. Just red one row and dark red the next.


And, yes, you're right. A Purist would have broken the yarn, torn apart the ball to find the exact place where the color changed on the front, spit-spliced it, and bam, bam, shazamm, a graceful gradation on the front as well. But me? Nah, I'm not doing it. I don't have a full ball any more, not since I tore out the first iteration of this sock (see below).

Why I tore it out is another story. All right, all right, I was knitting it on size 0 needles and hating the way it split and one of the Noble Knitters ... Zina, if I remember correctly ... said maybe it was the needle and I pooh-poohed her and then I went home and tore it out and ... yes, it needed to be knit on a 2. And the yarn was so curly and messed up I just threw it away. See? I told you it was a long story ... and don't you just hate it when someone tells you something really obvious and you find out they're right? Yeah, me too.

Anyway, it looks much better now, in Wendy Johnson's Diagonal Lace pattern. Well, except that I didn't read the errata, so it's Wendy's pattern with my error. But we won't hold that against Wendy. And my sock looks fine -- no one but Wendy will ever know and since Wendy and I don't knit on the same subway, she'll never see it.

In other news, the Dumbledore socks are finished. Yes, the cuff is short. And that's because I used another of Wendy's patterns (can't remember the name but it might be Dead Simple because it was) and hated it (sorry, Wendy!) and got bored and cast them off. Since they too were knit and frogged at least two or three times, it's a freaking miracle they're even done, so get over it!