The Tour de Sock

I've joined a new Ravelry knitting group called the "Tour de Sock". It's a challenge and a fundraiser that started last year.

If you want to play, you pay a fee of $7.50 (all profits to M.S.F.) Then you join a team (if you want to) and wait for the starting bell on June 1. There are six stages, lasting about 9 days. At the start of the stage, you use your password to acquire the secret pattern :) and then knit like the wind. First finished gets maximum points, and anyone who finishes in the time limit gets at least one point. There are prizes, etc, but it's mainly just fun, and everyone will get the six patterns.

I joined up before I realized that you can't just knit any six socks you like. When I saw the sock patterns from last year I had a little seizure. lol! I don't even think I can knit plain socks in 9 days!

I quickly joined up with a team of "Hogwarts friends" from the Harry Potter game. There are a lot of us there so far (40, at the moment) and my team mates are Andryl, Lambchop00, Seakame and Hokieknitter. The team plan is to have fun, because none of us are particularly confident about being that fast. Hokieknitter did a test run, just to see how many stitches she could knit in 2 hours. I thought that plan was brilliant, and since I had exactly one week until the start of the next "term" of the HP game, I decided to do a test.

I'm going to try and knit a pair of socks in one week. I have to use the standard 2.5mm needles and fingering weight/4ply yarn. And I'm going to count the hours.

Tonight I cast on the two toes and knit 3000 stitches in 4 hours. Doesn't look like much, does it?!

From what I remember of the few fingering-weight socks I've made, I need about 50 rows of foot and 50 rows of leg. These are 60st around, so 100 more rows is 12000 more stitches.

But it's possible. I mean, that's 4 more nights of knitting like tonight, and another night for the heels.

The Tour de Sock socks are going to be more complex, but I'll have 9 or 10 days.

The TdS ends just before the Olympics (and I'm in a Ravelympics team, too! Haha!) so that works out well. This does coincide with the Tour de Fleece, but that's not so much a competition as a "let's all have a spin together for fun". I also have Jasmine's birthday jumper to make, and an OWL jumper for me... but...

Knit All the Things.

(P.S. Finished another Milo)

Cute little things!