A Knitting Emergency?
Last week, when I posted about knitting socks and going on a journey of discovery to find my Perfect Sock, I fully intended to document my progress along the way—not just a debrief of what I learned, but the full experience of knitting these socks as it happened.
Unfortunately, two things got in my way:
The sun came out. This time of year, it’s RARE to see the sun and my body has been so depleted of vitamin D (seriously, it’s a medical thing) that I couldn’t pass up the chance to soak up some sun while I could. I basically camped out on the porch with my knitting as long as the sun was out and the last thing I considered was dragging my camera with me to document the progress.
I got some answers about a several-months long quest to find out more about the Young Juliette sweater from Silo season 2 (episode 1).
Young Juliette, season 2, episode 1 of Silo on Apple TV+
When I say that it took an incredible amount of willpower to not toss the socks aside and immediately start working on the Young Juliette Sweater, I am not at all exaggerating. I forged ahead on the socks knowing that as soon as I was done weaving in my ends, I’d be working on learning how to make that sweater.
I am also not exaggerating when I say that I am going to be talking about this sweater A LOT in the coming weeks…
Anyway, before I get there, let’s talk about the socks.
Overall, I honestly think I’m just about there with finding my perfect sock! I still have to wash them and see if that changes the size—as they were hot off the needles, they felt a teeny bit tight and just a hair too short. I have a feeling that washing and wearing them will change that and they’ll settle into being the correct size. But, just in case, I am prepared to add 4 stitches to the cast-on (half-way between the medium and large sizes in the pattern) and add 3-5 rows to the foot length before starting the toe.
A vast improvement over my first pair of socks! Success!!
The ONLY change that I definitely want to make is to the heel. As it is now in the pattern, it is far too narrow and I end up stepping on the heel flap. I really don’t like that because I can sometimes feel the seam when I walk around.
I’m not quite sure yet how to fix the heel issue. I’ll have to do some research on how to make a wider heel on a “heel flap and gusset” style sock, but I’m sure there are resources available to learn more about that.
The finished pair of socks!
Overall, these socks are a vast improvement over my first pair, and I’m thrilled that one of my goals for the year is already within reach. Of course, that is going on hold for now because my next project (which IS part of the resolutions I laid out for 2025) is kind of taking precedent over everything.
I set out to find a project to use the yarn I didn’t use for the Artus shawl knit along. After seeing the sweater on Silo, I have to say: I found the project!
Now, I don’t have a pattern for that sweater, and I still don’t really know much about constructing garments at this point (that was a different goal that I wanted to work on as well), but if I can nail down how to knit my perfect sweater, as well as figure out how to do that shell motif for the sweater, I think I can self-draft a pattern for making it that I can be happy with.
I hope?
At any rate, that’s the plan—first stop, knitting the Eddy Cowl by Julia Farwell-Clay… the shell pattern on the Young Juliette sweater seems to be based on (or inspired by) the 2016 Fall Prada design worn by Eddie Redmayne.
He’s looking like that because he doesn’t want anyone to breathe on or near his $6000 Prada sweater.
In 2016/2017, Julia Farwell-Clay went on her own odyssey to find out how to knit that (much like me after seeing that episode of Silo). She developed the cowl/hat pattern, as well as a pattern for a shawl using that shell motif. I plan using what I learn from her Eddy Cowl and applying it to the Young Juliette sweater. The motifs on the sweater are bigger and the texture element seems to be a bit more pronounced than either the Eddy Cowl/Hat/Shawl, or the Prada sweater that started it all. I’ll need to experiment a bit to get that down, but I already have some ideas.
