Smurf Killers

The best thing I can say about these socks is that they are finished.



I had to use a lot of the tools in my arsenal to finish these socks. I’ve previously showed you how my hands looked after knitting on these socks. I got really discouraged at the midway point (one sock done) because the vibrant colors that I had loved in the skein were so muddy in the finished sock



Well, after I finished the Nephew Tulip last Friday, I only had one WiP left on my radar. The Smurf Killer socks (named because Cristi said my blue hands looked like I had choked a smurf). I cast on the toe for the second sock on Friday night and got the garter square finished and got the sock into the round. But my index finger was getting shredded where the yarn is tensioned just before my right needle tip.



So I busted out some band-aids and they took the beating. I managed to finish the second sock in three (long) sittings. By the Monday afternoon session, my middle finger was also getting shredded, so the far-right band-aid was on that

No, I don’t normally save used band-aids, but these were used to protect my skin instead of to cover something icky. I took a picture because I wanted to fully document these socks and tossed them.


See the big “clean” strip on my index finger and a similar less-obvious one on my middle finger? That’s where the band-aids were.



I use a ladder-style row counter to keep track of my two increases every three rows. This one started out white. It got tossed too.


Toe Pic!

Garter toes



New Pathways heel turn following Riverbed increases



About an inch of 2x2 ribbing that I started when I realized I was about to hit the midpoint of the skein. I should have checked the yardage more carefully on this skein. The cuffs are much shorter than my usual because of yardage.

The dyer did contact me on Ravelry about my comments on this yarn. It’s the indigo that was cracking and turning my hands blue. Friction does that. She assured me that a bath for the finished socks would leave me with blue hands but not blue feet. And honestly, I could have dealt with the blue hands, the powder-blue suds when I washed my hands after knitting and the fact that the smurf-choking look made this project NON-portable if the yarn hadn’t shredded my hands while I was knitting with it.

Nothing is for everyone. This yarn obviously was not for me. So I’ll end where I started. The best thing I can say about these socks are that they’re finished.

Smurf Killers

Pattern: Riverbed Master
Source: New Pathways for Sock Knitters by Cat Bordhi
Size: mine (8.5” circumference, 9.5” foot length)
Yarn: Earthly Hues Saplings
Color: Ring Around the Moon
Source: The Loopy Ewe
Needles: 2.75mm needles for foot and heel, 3.0mm for cuff to make it go faster.
Started: 15 July 2009
Finished: 31 August 2009