Hi! It is hot out. So I’ve been knitting socks!

First off, the Oak Leaf Socks!

The premiere issue of Knotions came out last Monday, and I was lucky enough to have this pair of socks included. Jody did a rocking job with the magazine (I totally understand how much work goes in to creating something like that from scratch) and there’s plenty of interesting patterns to knit. I have my eyes on Theodore for Rob, but I’m a bit short on yarn. Maybe I’ll make a skinnier version. I have some handspun that would be perfect for a manscarf.

Back to the Oak Leaf socks. I really love the zigzag line that happens when you alternate k2tog, yo and yo, ssk. A bit of swatching and travelling stitches led me to the leaves. The pattern includes a pretty transition from the mostly-purl stitch pattern to the knit stitch appearance of the eye of partridge heel. If you like how that looks, you can mirror it in the toe. I didn’t include instructions for handling this in the toe because it would have added a lot of complexity to the pattern (since the sock length can vary).

The socks are knit in Nature’s Palette sock yarn, in the Mallard colorway. I love this yarn. It’s soft and plump and this particular colorway is gorgeous – it very subtly variegates between grass and olive green. I also used this yarn in my Endpaper Mitts, and I just bought more for another pair of socks.

I’ve been slowly catching up to my sock-a-month plan this year. Let’s call these the May socks, since they were actually knit that month.

June’s socks:

Pattern: Marilinda socks
Yarn: Valley Yarns Huntington

I’ve been interested in all of the new yarns appearing in the Valley Yarns line. I used to live thisclose to Webs and tried the Longmeadow yarn at the time, but ended up destashing it because I really didn’t like the texture. The Huntington is a basic non-smooshy sock yarn. It’s 25% nylon but is very soft – it definitely doesn’t have the nylony scratchiness that I’ve been experiencing in recent yarns. It’s a bit splitty, which is most noticeable if you drop a stitch or are cabling without a cable needle.

I’ve been wanting to knit the Marilinda socks since they came out. The pattern is deceptively easy – all of the action (travelling stitches changing directions, cable cross) happens in the same row. I did make a couple of small changes, the most major of which is that I changed the double decreases. The pattern has double decreases where the center stitch is on top, but that center stitch is a purl background stitch that suddenly becomes a knit stitch. I think that changing those stitches to a k3tog on the right half of the chart and sssk on the left is a bit prettier.

One small thing to watch out for with this pattern is that the sizing runs very large. The pattern is worked over 75 stitches in the leg and there’s very little to pull in the pattern – only one four-stitch cable every 14 rows. I had a smaller gauge than the pattern (8.5 sts/in vs the pattern’s 8sts/in) and the sock fits my size 10 foot (9 inch circumference) and large calves perfectly – the pattern as written would have been way too large. Besides that, I’m very happy with the way that these socks turned out!