Mini Mochi and Me

The Loopy Ewe carries a yarn called Mini Mochi. For a short time this yarn was THE craze. It has colors like Noro Kureyon, and is soft as a kitten. And it's not too expensive. I fell for it, and ordered two balls.

I DO NOT like Mini Mochi. One of the balls I got had 2 knots, the other one. The blue dye in it comes off on my hands (and I imagine later my feet). The twist is almost none existant and it pulls apart like roving, AND because of that it produces a fuzzy worn fabric. And the "soft as a kitten" feeling is lost once it is knit up. But more than anything I don't like it because I could never get it to work for a pattern (it's tough to find a pattern that you can knit with yarn that rips apart on itself...) and its even harder to rip out because it felts to itself... So I lost yards and yards of it after ripping it out and not being able to rip out the cast on. But I didn't want to throw it away. The yarn is rather pretty.

So after ripping out Marlene. (Did I mention that. I got to the heel, tried it on, decided that even though I could get it on it was too tight and the entire thing is now gone.) I needed a project to bring to knit at Aimee's. I grabbed the mini mochi and some needles. I'd wing it.

I did the turkish cast on (how do you tighten that up? The stitches are really large) for 8 stitches on each side and made a toe for a 64 stitch sock. Then I came home and looked through Wendy's book for a pattern.

Oops, should have looked first. Apparently even though you decrease a cuff down toe to 8 stitches, with turkish cast on she recommends 16 stitches on each side. The "Dead Simple Lace sock" looked cute, but then I realized the pattern isn't centered on the foot. How odd. So I went with the Butterfly socks.

I don't see butterfly's in these socks at all...

And the mini mochi is working okay. First off, I actually ended up ripping out the toe I did at Aimee's. (And turkish cast on was much easier to rip out than a knitted cast on!) I did it on US 1.5s and had 11 spi too tight, I thought. So I went up to the 2s and now I think it's too big (9.5 spi) because of that the sock isn't pulling the lace pattern open, so the fuzzyness of the mini mochi really obscures the pattern. I'm doing the heel right now and am really confused how it's going to turn out, but I'm trusting the book.

The book itself, Socks From the Toe Up, is alright. Good, but not great. I love love love Wendy Knits so more than anything I bought the book to support the author, since I don't pay for the blog. But the patterns seem very run of the mill. And Wendy has some really awesome patterns out there already. I think she was going for a basic reference book, so maybe that's why and I suppose the reference of heels and toes is useful, but I still had to go to youtube to see how they were done when I got confused, so it's not necessary. I like all the sport weight patterns (go figure, since I have no sportweight), and one or two of the fingering weight I'll probably knit, but it isn't a must have knitting book. If the internet didn't exist, I'd say it was. But the author is an internet essential, so she deserves a payday! I don't regret the purchase.

Edit: Finished the heel flap, and they fit perfectly. BUT the yarn really hides the pattern, which I wasn't crazy about to begin with. I'm not sure if I should rip them out or keep them... Do they just look bad?