I feel dirty and sacrilegious just having thought of that title. However, after hours of knitting and ripping my latest sock attempt, I hope you can forgive me. I’ve been coveting the book New Pathways for Sock Knitters: Book One
I flipped through the book and settled on the Coriolis architecture. After all, “hand- painted yarns throw their colors at an angle in the Coriolis band, looking stunning” which sounded just perfect for my Hacho. And it is…just look at that lovely little band of goodness. One problem. The sock didn’t fit at all. Just a little too wide and already WAY too long despite not even being finished with the arch expansion. No big, it’s a new technique and now there was plenty of knitting to get a really good gauge swatch. I checked my gauge. I checked my math. I looked at the charts again (the book has a fantastic master chart that determines how many stitches to use
based on any gauge and foot circumference and you use the row gauge to determine length). Everything was right. No matter. I’ll just reduce the initial number of stitches from 46 to 42 (maybe my gauge is really more like 5.5 instead of 6 anyway after checking again) and reduce the toe length by an inch. Yep, that ought to do it.
So I ripped out to the toe increases and began again. It was still looking too long but I decided to see it through anyway.
See the picture where the sock looks pretty decent on my foot and appears to have a “heel”? Well, there is no heel. That is just about the length of the sock when I had finished the arch expansion. I went on a couple of rows after that doing some decreases thinking that it really didn’t fit too bad even without a heel and maybe I should just continue. I just can’t quite convince myself though. My decreases don’t fit with the existing architecture and besides that this yarn deserves a good sock! A correct sock! So what is a knitter to do? I’m really not sure at this point. Beginning again just isn’t going to work. Despite the title, I am quite sure Cat Bordhi has not made a mistake. There just has to be something simple that I am missing, doesn’t there? I’m off to scope out some blogs get more information on successful Coriolises? Corioli? If you know anything about this strange phenomena I’m having, please let me know!
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6 Responses to Could Cat Bordhi possibly be wrong?
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I dove into the Foxglove recently and it looked… wrong. Way too big. And I knitted until I got a good four inches to try it on and it was. I frogged it, figuring I’d come back to it and simply cast on for a smaller sock and see how that went.
It wasn’t until a few days ago that I had a sort of “duh” moment: while reading a random sock pattern, I saw a note that said, in effect, “Don’t freak out if the numbers look wrong. This allows for almost an inch of negative ease because socks should fit snugly, right?”
I believe (I haven’t gone back to double-check that I didn’t dork it all on my own) the Cat Bordhi socks were perfectly set to have zero negative ease. Which is wayyyyy too big for a sock. I know I checked my math several times, and I know I said, “Yep, my foot is 9″ around and my sock is 9″ around. Why isn’t this working?” so I’m pretty sure I missed the negative ease portion of the tutorial or it simply isn’t there.
If that makes you feel any better.
Hi Diva, I am working on the baby sock size in the begining of the book. I am glad to hear that the negative ease issue is something to look out for. I am going to look you up in Ravelry as I live in Tucson, AZ. Kathy
[...] Could Cat Bordhi Be Wrong blog post [...]
I am starting a coriolis right now and am very confused, although it sounds like my confusion may be different from yours. My issue is with the way the instructions say to calculate the toe section length. When I do it, I get 2″. Two inches? That means I would start the arch increases immediately after finishing the toe increases…so I’m like…what?
I left my copy of New Pathways on the boat in Tahiti (we live on the boat, visit in the US), but I had the opposite problem with the Coriolis socks. Mine were about 3″ too short. I remeasured, did a second check on the gauge (the too-short sock made a great gauge swatch) and tried again. Still too short. I measured the length of the swirled portion and then measured the length from where I wanted the swirl to end at the ankle to where it would begin,. based on my sample. I then did a standard toe-up sock and started the swirl at that point. I kept trying on the sock and started the expansion for the heel when it looked about right. I absolutely hate floppy socks so I took a few stitches out of the sole (no one will see them, and it made for a roomier toe without the floppy arch/ankle bend). The socks owe their inspiration to the book, but aside from the idea of the swirl they were done without a pattern. Confusion over the patterns in this book seems to happen for quite a few people, and flipping back and forth to check on techniques for heel, toe, decrease, increase, etc. just adds to the confusion. I know why the book is organized this way, but it helps the publisher, not the knitter.
Knitting all the way to the ankle and then measuring where the shaping ought to have been isn’t much fun.
You did check the Errata page right?
http://www.catbordhi.com/NP1.html