Poppies: The End

I finally finished my Poppy Fields Socks just before the Lollipop Guild kit arrived last week.

I don't have any desire to disparage the pattern or the designer, so I'll point out that the things that bothered me about the pattern might not bother other people.  But I also know from previous comments that people are curious why these were not my favorites, so this is a rundown of some things that made it a pattern that didn't work well for me:

1. I don't want to harp on this (and I know I've mentioned it before), but I don't like it when patterns give size(s) based on foot length/shoe size with no measured circumference.  I know that even a measured circumference is somewhat subjective (stretched, etc.), but it gives me a much better idea than foot length.
   
   
2. Because of the size issue and the needle size recommendation for the pattern I had a hard time sizing these.  Using the recommended US 0 needles with sport weight yarn seemed off to me, but I thought maybe it was for a particularly tight gauge, so I balanced it out by starting with the large size.  After knitting the toe and starting the foot I found that I had more stitches to the inch than the recommended gauge and the sock was going to be loose on me.  When I ripped it out and started over with US 1½ (2.5 mm) my gauge matched and the sock fit snugly on my foot... until the heel.  The finished short row heel was like a little cap for the bottom of my heel and there was no way that I was ever going to get my foot into the finished sock.  Since I had gauge and it seemed to fit well enough otherwise I didn't have any confidence that ripping it all out and starting over with the large size again was going to give me anything but a loose sock with a better heel, so I manufactured my own heel based on Yarnissima's brainless sock pattern.  Then I could finally get the sock on my heel, too.
   
   
3. The pattern was accommodating and provided both written directions and charts, but I found the symbols on the charts difficult to read.  The symbols blended together with the lines in a way that made it difficult for me to pick out which symbol was where and stood for what.  I usually favor the charts, but opted for the written directions for these instead.  In hindsight, I probably should have rewritten all of the charts myself... on a single page.  The written directions were spread across several pages (as written directions often are) and that added some complication for this pattern.  The pattern was described as:
   
   

   Worked from the toe up, these socks provide a “choose your own adventure” for the knitter, as once the poppy stems are set, you may choose to work any combination of leaves and poppies you like! The socks are finished with a picot-rib bindoff, a speciality of The Sexy Knitter.

   Which means that I needed to flip back and forth amongst the pages when I had different leaves going at the same time.  There are also about 6 different leaf options and depending on when you start any one of them you need to be able to read where you are on the others in your knitting or keep detailed notes of which row you're knitting for each leaf-in-progress.
   Now the leaves aren't complicated and I did start to memorize them fairly quickly, but it's a lot more to keep track of than some charts I've followed in the past.  It meant that there were often pages to shuffle and things to concentrate on, so these were limited to times when I had that concentration and I quickly decided these weren't the sort of socks that should ever leave the house to be knit elsewhere.
   
   
4. I tried three times to use the bind off given in the pattern and it always seemed tight and not very stretchy, so I was concerned I would never actually get the socks on. I finally switched to Jeny’s surprisingly stretchy bind off.  Even the surprisingly stretchy reaches its limits and I have to wiggle it past the ankle bone, but it works and isn't tight around my leg.

So there you go.  A lot of words to explain why I'm happy to have some cheery finished socks but the pattern for them will be at the bottom of my pile.  Maybe "choose your own adventure" just wasn't my knitting style (although I used to really like the books!) and/or maybe it was just bad timing.  Whatever my problem(s), I got them off the needles and hopefully they'll be comfortable and I'll enjoy wearing them.  And I'm already off on other knitting adventures.

(Why, yes, I did bold a few key points in case this was just too much to read and most people would want to skim.)