Count-down to Sock Madness

While I am watching the Australian Grand Prix on Replay, other knitters are eyeing the Sock Madness Countdown Clock and frantically knitting on their qualifier socks... Today is the final day to either qualify for a team (you then have to finish a pair of socks according to specifications) or as a cheerleader (finish either one sock or two socks past the heel turn). This qualification period lasted 2 weeks, which is a good period to get properly warmed up for the competition.

To qualify, you also make a few specific pictures of the socks, and in this case, for the Smock Madness socks by Elizabeth White, it had to be clear how many 'big smocks' we knit on the leg, heel and foot. Hence the white contrasting yarn.

In the Dutch 'shadow' group, someone started with posting pictures of socks on the kitchen top. And of course, like the Stroopwafels, it took off across the board, and I also (cleaned my counter tops and) hoisted myself on top to take a picture.

I took a week to knit the socks (I took my time...) and within MINUTES, the socks were stolen. By the person in the house who told me before that he would never knit socks by me because they are itchy. He wore them all evening and did not even take them off when going to bed (yup). He did change socks to go to school, but when he got home, the Smock socks came on again. I think he likes them. (I had to do some undercover under-the-table photography to capture this special mommy moment.)

But to get down to 'specs'. I had decided to use a long gradient yarn for this sock, and decided on the Austermann Murano I had in my stash.  The pattern 'dropped' during a skating weekend, so I enjoyed quite a few hours in front of the telly (or laptop, if it was game/tv/video time for one of the kids) watching races and knitting away.

 The pattern is a bit hard to see when the sock is not stretched, but it has nice smock stitches in an XOXO pattern in the middle with a row of large smocks along-side.

And even though on the first sock, I suffered 'long gradient syndrome' on the heel turn - where you get quite an abrupt colour change because the gradient changes colour on the heel flap - I am really happy with the result overall... Despite the yarn! It is soft and fluffy, but very pilly... And the fact that the Batman has worn it already, does not make it better ;) But definitely a pattern I will go back to!

And there was plenty of yarn left, despite warnings that this was a wool guzzler...

Talking about left-over yarn... We had already knit a sock for Sock Madness... The warm-up sock! For 13 Memories by Knitjoyz, we were asked to pick 13 colours from a left-over box, and I came up with a sort of gradient... 

And look how nice this came out! In the end, I did not use the final soft pink, but went from variegated fuchsia to variegated light pink and then ended on the grey. But all those ends!!!!

The pattern is a bit clearer here, a nice wave shape. I was able to save this pair of socks from the Batman, and it is waiting on the mantle piece for the socks that are to follow...

The Countdown Clock currently says: 6 hours and 8 minutes... Go knitters, go!!! At the moment 922 pairs have already been finished (!) and 599 are still registered as In Progress... This will be one amazing competition!