For the second stage of Tour-de-Sock, I was prepared to be competitive: it was my last vacation day so I could just sit at home and knit. But then it turns out that the start is at 8 PM and that kind of ruined my plans, because I can't stay up all night and knit. I surprised myself by staying up until 2 AM, though, and the last bit I owe to Hippusia Johanna who was doing a live Instagram of her knitting and that kind of kept me in the knitting mood for so late. By the way, reminded me of when I was young and there were TV chats with hosts - the host reads SMS text messages that are also shown on the TV screen and then comments on them. Seemed to work in the knitting competition context! (Sorry for not participating in the discussion, but I was knitting so I couldn't type messages at the same time :)

The second pattern included colorwork, and it gave me an opportunity to try out my new yarn thimble. I forgot to show it on my recent post of Jyväskylä Summer Knit Festival, but it was actually my first purchase. I'm glad that the first booth that I visited at the festival was Goldsmith Sanni Lehtinen's, because she only had like 5 yarn thimbles left at that point and I was lucky to still get one. I have to say that it made knitting so much easier as I didn't have to worry about keeping the yarns in order.


The pattern also included Latvian braids, and that was a new technique for me. This is what I love about Tour-de-Sock: it forces you to try new techniques! I had seen Latvian braids before, but I'm not a big fan of the look, so I probably would have never tried them if I didn't have to.

I had some trouble with my choice of yarns. My first choice didn't match the pattern, so I had to think of something else after seeing what I would be knitting. I loved the Priha socks, also by Tiina Kuu, that I knitted on the warm-up round and the dark blue looked so good that I wanted to use it for these socks as well. I had 40 grams left, exactly the same amount as in the sample small-size socks listed on the pattern. Only thing is, that in the sample the main colour was not used in colorwork, which was mentioned, but I didn't notice it at that time. So, I ran out of yarn at toes, and had to use the contrast color, which doesn't look very nice.


Having already started knitting, I started thinking that my contrast colors might not have enough contrast after all, so I made one more change before starting the colorwork. This is where I lost my sponsor yarn point, as I switched from a Lanitium ex Machina yarn to the pink that I used here. To be eligible for extra point for using sponsor yarn, you'd have to use sponsor yarn in either the main color or both contrast colors. If I were to knit the socks again, I would use the dark color for the birds, and a lighter color as the main color.

Being in the competitive mode, I went with the smallest size. I thought it was a women's S, but the model in the pictures is my 6-year-old! She loves the socks, so we have a happy owner for this pair. Only thing she's not happy with is the tightness of the legs, she really had to pull hard to get them on. I was afraid of ripping the socks when I forced them on my extra legs to get the first pictures for the competition.


And the competition? Well, I finished 24th, so I did a lot better than the first round! For the next round, I'll be traveling again, so no competition there. I'm still hoping that there's going be one round that I can knit in one go. If I can knit socks that fast. I'd like to try.