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Knock Your Socks Off

Back in 2011, like millions of thrifty fashion lovers, I camped outside (okay, I got there five minutes before the doors opened) my local Target waiting to shop the highly anticipated (and well-marketed) Missoni for Target line.  Weeks before the launch, I had scoped out the look-book and identified exactly which items I wanted to buy.  But despite having a disciplined plan of attack, all restraint, and apparently reason (my own, in case that wasn’t clear), was cast out of my cart, presumably so I could fill it up with things I had never planned on buying.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, after hauling my purchases home and trying to forget how much money I had blown, I then… logged onto the website – or at least tried to – to purchase even more zig-zag wares!  From there, the my insanity escalated.  Before I knew it, I was trolling Ebay bidding on overpriced merch that would make the seediest loan shark blush.  There I was at 2 am scoping out auctions, initiating bidding wars, and getting outbid in the last three-tenths of a second (I was more successful with auctions that ended at 4 am).  Clearly, I had plum lost my mind!
 
It’s now two-and-a-half years later.  I still have and use many of those items, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say some failed to hold up (I’m looking right at you zipper-less, frayed fabric roll on suitcase).  Knowing now what I didn’t want to know then, I could have saved a lot of money (and gotten a bit more sleep – which is more valuable than liquid gold with two small boys running around) if I had only dusted off my stitch dictionary and de-stashed some self-striping yarn.
 
But alas, that’s what I’ve been up to this week in order to satisfy my insatiable appetite for that beguiling stitch - the chevron.  In digging through my stash, I came across two skeins of the ridiculously affordable Knit Picks Felici self-striping yarn in Building Blocks.  The saturated hues remind me so much of the Missoni for Target’s Colore colorway.  Up until this project, my sock knitting has stayed true to vanilla stockinette or varying 2x2, 3x1 rib stitched patterns.  But I’m feeling more confident knitting on two circs, and I felt it was time to explore the innumerable combinations of knitted increases and decreases (because that’s really all chevron is). 


Self striping yarn is fun and rewarding to knit.  There are no tails to weave in or jogs to correct.  And my pace has picked up too.  I’ll tell myself, "Just one more stripe." But then I get to the next color, and I find that one more stripe becomes two, and before you know it, you have the entire cuff and leg knit.  

I so adore these socks that I’m thinking I may put another stashed skein to good chevron use.  But before I get zonked by my zig-zag fantasies, I’m putting some order in my project queue.  So next up is to take my left over LL’s Christmas in Paris and make a slip stitch, Supah Slouch Hat.  I think it will compliment my Linen Stitch scarf.  Until then, bon tricot!
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