Gansey Legwarmers

Yes, some knitting! Oh, the knitting. It's been a hard road this summer. After I finished the pocket-on-a-string, which, by the way, I've been using all summer and love to bits and thank goodness I decided to line it, I tried some cabled gloves. I messed up the cable, a whole bunch of stitches fell off the needles when I tried to fix it, and I turned the glove back to yarn. Then I tried a doily. A whole bunch of stitches fell off the needle while I was trying to switch from DPNs to a circular, I got frustrated, and I turned it back to string. So I decided to forget the cables, forget the lace, but maybe, just maybe, I could handle some knits and purls? You think? (In my defense, my fingers have been hurting all summer. They don't seem to work right. But still.)

These are the Gansey Leg Warmers from Interweave Knits Weekend 2011, which I saw while buying the circular for the ill-fated doily and decided to bring home with me. If you click over to the Ravelry pattern page, you'll see that mine are a bit less slouchy than the originals. I swapped out yarns, using Reynolds Soft Sea Wool that I already had, so my gauge was a little off. I don't mind, since these still reach from my ankle to my knee. (Is Reynolds still making yarn anymore? I can't find a good link to share. I'm really out of the whole yarn-buying groove and I have no idea what's out there. I could not buy yarn for years and still knit away.)

If I'd been paying attention, I could have just added a few more repeats of something or other to each leg, but I wasn't, so I didn't. I had two skeins of natural and two of grey, and while I think these would look great all in natural, I didn't think 100 g would do it. (I was right; these took 113 g.)

The pattern has you doing four different repeats and gives you the order, but you only do the star repeat once, and it's not in the middle. This drives me a little batty, but since I was going to be batty anyway, I decided to do that one in grey for the first legwarmer. (You can tell that more easily in the top photo; the star is in grey on the right legwarmer.) To continue the apparent theme of utter randomness begun by the pattern, I knit one of the diamond repeats in grey on the second legwarmer.

When I finished weaving in ends and showed my husband, he said, "Are you going to wear those?" Well, that was the general idea, yes. I love the Reynolds Soft Sea Wool; it's so smushy and soft (truth in advertising!). But it doesn't wear well as a sock, despite having all that sock pattern support. But I can wear these under jeans, or over leggings with a skirt, because you know what? It gets cold here in the winter. I hate being cold.

I maybe even got my knitting groove back in time for autumn, because I'm wanting to cast on something new...

(We fared remarkably well during Tropical Storm Irene--she got downgraded before she reached us--much, much better than most of the state, since we never even lost power. We've gained a couple extra days of summer vacation, too, and I'm thrilled. School shouldn't start in August in New England.)