It Ain't Pretty

I cast on for the Anastasia socks, using my wonderfully soft spring green 100% Alpaca Wool. After some experimentation with different sized needles, I settled on the Brittany 2.75mm needles that gave me so much trouble on the Long Socks (I ended up breaking 3 of the needles!!). I tried the zeroes the pattern suggests, but my gauge was way off (far too many stitches), and I felt like a gorilla using the fingering weight yarn and teeny tiny needles.

This is my very first attempt at two things: a provisional cast on (not as scary or as hard as I imagined), and a short row toe. The cast on went fine- I was using worsted weight 4-ply as the scrap yarn, which proved a simdge difficult, but not too bad. The decreasing for the toe went fine (the second time), but when I began the increases I realized I had misread the directions and forgotten to slip the first stitch of each row. I slipped the stitches correctly for the increases, but I think it would have looked better if I had gone for consistency, rather than following the pattern, since I wasn't about to rip out the decreases again!

The yarn is very washed out in this photo. It's actually a bright green, almost yellow. It's a wonderful spring color. hopefully I'll get these done before spring is over!

This, plus the mother's day present for my mom (a repeat of something I've already shown on here), should keep me busy for all the long hours of driving (we're moving this weekend) and flying (another trip to the East Coast next week).