Death to Swatches!

War Background

So the Sock wars started on the Friday... at 5 am. The dossiers were sent out using an automated system. Most emails systems caught that email as spam and did what it normally does to most spam: filter or delete. I'm a paranoid individual so all my spam is filtered. But some people had systems where the spam was deleted automatically so they never received their dossiers.

Within a couple hrs of the emails being sent out, people already started bitching about how it wasn't fair that other people got their dossiers before other people. Some more melodramatic people even went as far as saying that they quit because the competition wasn't fair.

Life isn't fair. Suck it up princess. I had to work a full 8 hrs the day that the 'war' started. You didn't see me bitching about "oh, people have unfair advantages cuz they don't have to work." The pattern was posted for everyone to d/l at 7 am. With the way the pattern was written, you didn't need to know the size of the socks until the last minute.

Now I'm pretty sure none of this BS happened during the last 2 Sock Wars. The main reason why I think people started complaining is because there's a prize this time. The previous 2 wars were for bragging rights. Ah well.

News on the warfront

If you haven't heard already, my first sock is to be frogged*. The swatch LIED... LIED I say.

I was a good girl and swatched. The 2.5mm gave me 17 sts / 2" while the 2.75mm gave me 16 sts / 2". So I went with the 2.75mm, which were the recommended needle size for that yarn/gauge.

That should've set off alarm bells. I knit continental so my tension is loose. Even, but loose. As a rule of thumb, I tend to go 1 needle size down to compensate for my tension. That almost always gives me gauge. Why I didn't listen to my gut feeling is beyond me.

So here I am, knitting like a mad woman, trying to get the pair of socks done and in the mail on Monday. By Saturday, I figure I'll be lucky if I finished 1 sock this weekend. Sunday night, 11 pm, my curiousity got the best of me and I decided to check my gauge on my partially finished sock.

BAD IDEA. The gauge was giving me 14 sts/2" instead of the 16 sts/2" that I got from the swatch. Since my victim is a US7, I doubt that the sock would fit her.

Emailed my victim to confirm that she indeed had tiny feet and I'll be frogging the sock tonight. 10+ hrs of knitting wasted.

Le sigh. I hope Pistols-n-Sticks will make good use of the extra 10 hrs she'll be getting.


* Frog (v) - to rip out a project. "Rip it, rip it"