FO: Wyvern socks

For a long time, I've been resistent to trying Koigu. All I knew is that it came in lots of gorgeous colors but was a little outside my comfort zone in terms of price. Coming from a staunch New England Puritan upbringing, I somehow could never bring myself to spend $12-14 on one skein of yarn. And what would I make from it anyway? Then I started reading about how wonderful it was to knit with, and how soft, and saw some pictures of how it looked when knitted up. I started thinking that maybe getting just a little bit would be ok, just to try out.


Then came the Great Yarn Diet of 2007 (in which I am resolved not to purchase any yarn for an entire year, knitting from stash alone). However, the Great Yarn Diet of 2007 was preceded by the Great Yarn Binge of 2006, in which I went to one of the LYS in town and dropped about $300 in 45 minutes (Hey, they were having a sale. I got a lot of stuff). Included in this great haul were two skeins of Koigu for a pair of socks. They sat in the stash for about five months before I started thinking about what pattern to use. These socks were definitely going to be for me, since I'd been knitting my husband a pair of socks for what felt like forever. I looked around a bit and came across the pattern for Wyvern socks - I've always had a soft spot for dragons, and these looked like dragon scales to me, so off we went.

Pattern: Wyvern socks
Yarn: Koigu KPPPM in color #1014 , 2 skeins
Needles: some unknown brand size 2/4 US
Modifications: I added some additional space in the heel area by increasing 2 stitches every other row for the last inch or so before the heel. Did the short row heel, and then decreased the extra stitches at each side of the leg until I was back to the normal stitch count. I did these in the unribbed version, since my size 10 clodhoppers are neither narrow nor high arched.

Here's another picture of the scales:

and you can see that I have not yet cut the yarn and woven in the ends. Sigh...it's the finishing that gets me every time. One of the things I like best about these socks is that they're knit from the toe-up, so you can use as much of the yarn as possible. These are a bit of a tight fit to put on, even with the extra space towards the heel, but nice and comfy once they're on. And so pretty. I suspect, from what I've heard about using Koigu for socks, that they won't wear well, but so be it. Most of my enjoyment in knitting comes from the process, not the end result, so I'll be happy to make more when these are done.