Latterly (plus giveaway)

Half the trick to knitting is balance (balance knits with purls to keep things from curling, balance cables with plain stitches to keep things from squinching up too tight, balance increases with decreases to keep things from changing size).  Latterly are a perfect balance between lace (fairly entertaining lace at that) and lovely, quiet ribbing.  I’m delighted to have them back out.

I love balancing lace with ribbing.  It works especially well here as this lace has you changing your stitch count from row to row.  If you have too much of that all on the same row, your sock can get a bit unruly.  But the ribbing keeps the lace nicely contained and marching along in a lovely, orderly fashion.

And we all know ribbing makes for a comfy, well-fitting sock.  But if you’re anything like me, you can’t quite bring yourself to manage a whole sock with nothing but ribs.  That’s not nearly interesting enough, no matter how great it feels!  So throwing some gorgeous lace on there is a grand way to keep things interesting.

And this really is lovely lace.  You do a whole bunch of increases all at once, then spend then spend the next few rows carefully whittling them back down to your original stitch count.  Then you do it again, with a slightly different set of decreases. Playing with the stitch count like that often produces beautifully organic stitch patterns (it’s a really easy way to get lovely curvy lines), and this is no exception.   And of course, the ribbing marches along on the sides to keep everyone on their best behavior!

It’s a perfect way to show off a solid or semi solid yarn (the lace is involved enough that you might lose some of its impact if you used a more variegated yarn).  So of course I reached for Vice, because they do marvelous solids (these use Carnal, now sadly discontinued, though Paradigm is a great substitute).  I know Vice is a bit hard to track down (you have to ask your LYS to carry it, but it’s totally worth asking for).  So I’m going to help someone out there fall as much in love with it as I am.  I’ve got a skein of Carnal to send home with someone.  Just leave a comment telling me how you feel about ribbing.  Secretly love it? Only just tolerable because it’s so handy?  Isn’t happening no matter how useful it is?  There’s no right or wrong answer, I just like knowing how you guys feel about stuff!

And while I can’t quite manage to send yarn to everyone, I can give everyone a discount.  You can use the code BALANCE to get a dollar the price between now and Friday.  Just put Latterly in your ravelry cart, click on the ‘use a coupon code’ button, and type in the code BALANCE.  You’ll see the change in price reflected right away.

Comments left between now and the end of the day (eastern time) Friday, June 24, 2016 will be entered to win.  I’ll pick a winner, contact them to get their addresses, and arrange to send yarn their way.  Be sure to use a real email address so I can contact you if you’ve won (I won’t do anything with those email addresses besides notify the winner).  If I do email you, I need to hear back from you within 72 hours or I will pick a new winner and contact them.  Sorry, but I can only ship physical prizes to US addresses.

P.S. For anyone keeping alarmingly close track at home, this was initially out (a long long long time ago) as Once More With Feeling (and if you bought it way back then, you’ll already have the new version in your rav library, don’t worry).  It was one of my very first patterns, and I hadn’t yet fully committed to the One Really Awesome Word For Titles thing.  But along with adding new sizes and better charts and prettier pictures, part of the fun of re-releasing old patterns is that I get to change the name if I want, so I am!