Way back in February I decided to knit a pair of socks for each month in 2008. I felt that my sock yarn stash was getting entirely out of control and I had just enough skeins to knit 12 pairs of socks.

Well, it’s almost the end of the year and I’m pleased to report that I’m DONE! 12 pairs, finished, ends woven in, mostly blogged. Before we get to the celebration, here’s pair number 12:

Pattern: Spring Forward, Knitty 2008
Yarn: Zen Yarn Garden Bamboolicious in Chocoplum

Yay! Done! These were supposed to be for me, but they turned out a bit small because when I try to “knit loosely”, it never works. They’re going to my mother in law.

The pattern: pretty, but ok in general. I closed my eyes tightly and ignored the fact that the ribbing doesn’t blend into the pattern in any way. I also made the socks symmetrical by starting the second sock on row 12. This is such an easy thing to do that makes the pair look even better!

Ok, time for a sock party!

WOO!

YEAH!

SOCKS!

Statistics:

• One pair is knit with my handspun
• Two pairs are gifts: Marina Piccola and Spring Forward
• Three pairs are designs that were published in Knotions and Knitty: Oak Leaf Socks, Interlocking Leaves, and Hanging Vines
• Eight pairs are lace (well, involve yos)
• Eleven pairs are textured

So did I achieve my original goal, sock yarn reduction? Um, no.

Twelve pairs of sock yarn, all ready for 2009! Just kidding, I’m so very over socks. I thought that I wouldn’t be able to stop knitting them, as they’re the perfect portable project, but somehow I got over that all to easily. I have swatched the blue Wollmeise for a friend, but I’m in no rush to get started. I have a new, epic project waiting in the wings. For next time, sock lovers!

Knotions launched last weekend and I have a little green pattern in it:

Hanging Vines socks! These might just be my favorites of the three recent sock designs (Oak Leaf and Interlocking Leaves were the other two). They were inspired by the ooodles of jasmine growing along the fence in our backyard. The leaves are long gone, but the vines stay nice and green all year long.

I ripped and reknit the cuff seemingly endless times. I was damn sure to make sure it was perfect before continuing on, because I wasn’t going to do any crazy chop-and-graft action again. I’m still having nightmares about unpicking all those stitches!

The yarn was dyed by Roxanne of Zen Yarn Garden. It’s such a great yellowish green – my photos definitely do not do it justice. Louet is the base yarn, and I really like working with it – it’s the perfect weight for socks and has a nice plump twist.

The only thing I’m unhappy with about these is the photos. I took a boatload of pictures in our backyard near the jasmine, but the lighting was horrible back there and you couldn’t make out the stitch pattern. I resigned myself to doing a photoshoot on our porch, which is where I photographed the Ironwork Socks. The pattern name makes more sense if you look at the socks when the cuff is at the top of the frame – the leaves are actually hanging then, and I think they look even better that way!

This is the last of the sock designs, because I have finished my 12th pair of the sock-a-month plan and am very, very done with socks for now! Socks, you are old news! Berets? Now that’s where it’s at. Even if I look silly in hats. More news next time, dear blog.

The Oak Leaf Socks pattern (originally appearing in Knotions) has been translated to German! Thanks to Andrea (kaita on Ravelry) for doing all the work of translating the pattern!

You can download the German translation here (pdf). Enjoy!

Hi blog! It’s been a while, but you know how that goes. I’ve been super swamped with work and we’re “sheltering in place” in preparation for hurricane Ike (we’re in central Houston, so no worries – we’re pretty safely out of harm’s way). I’m dropping in all quick like and tell you about these socks.

A few months ago we made the Squares for Sharron blanket. One of my squares had a stitch pattern that I fell in love with, so I sockified it and made these:

The Interlocking Leaves socks are available in Knitty, Fall 2008!

They’re worked toe-up in one my favorite sock yarns – Tess Super Socks and Baby. Yummy yummy stuff. I worked a toe-up heel flap, sort of Widdershins-esque, but a bit different (more true to top-down construction) in the heel turn. And of course they have an Eye of Partridge heel flap, as is my way!

I hope you like them! I’m still working my way towards the sock-a-month plan, and these are August’s socks, even though I knit them in May and I’m blogging them in September. I haven’t yet blogged July’s socks yet, but the next post will talk about those and September’s pair. I’m on a roll!

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!

All of my knits have been in the unbloggable category these days, but I managed to create some bloggable drama.

Drama! I was happily knitting along on this pair of socks when I decided to change the rib pattern after starting the second sock. I made the executive decision to chop off the almost-completed first sock’s cuff, reknit the cuff in the new pattern, then graft the first sock back together again.

This was a bad idea on two counts. First, chopping off the cuff (well, snipping a stitch and unraveling a row to separate the two halves) was a pain in itself, because I ended up with way too few stitches on the needles! I was way off, by three or four stitches per DPN. I had to slowly unpick stitches for a couple of rows in order to get the correct stitch count. Then, I was left with the prospect of grafting in rib. The book I have gives instructions for 1×1 rib, and it was pretty difficult for me to extrapolate the instructions to my 2×2 rib.

I ended up knitting a rib swatch with a one-row stripe of a contrast color, and then figuring out the sequence of steps by following the path of the contrast strand. Hopefully these instructions will help someone in the same predicament!

Here’s how to graft 2×2 rib, where you chopped up your knitting so that one of the pieces is shifted by a half-stitch (ETA – this will also work if you provisionally cast one of the pieces). The normal 2×2 portion is the Lower instructions and the 1/2 stitch shifted portion is on the Upper. Start with the K2 part of the rib.

The stitch in parenthesis is the type of stitch on the needle. K-p denotes one of the half-shifted stitches in the Upper portion, although I wasn’t very consistent in labelling them in my notes. Always drop the first stitch in a pair.

(k) Lower – draw yarn through as if to K
(k) Lower – as if to P

(k) Upper – as if to P
(k) Upper – as if to K

(k) Lower – as if to K
(p) Lower – as if to K

(k) Upper – as if to K
(k-p) Upper – as if to P

(p) Lower – as if to P
(p) Lower – as if to K

(p) Upper – as if to K
(k) Upper – as if to P

(p) Lower – as if to P
(k) Lower – as if to P

(p-k) Upper – as if to P
(k) Upper – as if to K

Blog, I’ve been neglecting you again. I blame freaking Lost – Rob and I are working our way through seasons 1-3, which always trumps internet time. I’m about four projects behind on updates (if you count handspun), so here’s a little two-for-one sock action.

Pattern: Leyburn Socks
Yarn: Lisa Souza Sock!, the wool/nylon blend one

I’m in a bit of a knitting funk these days, and the only thing I can manage to finish is socks. So socks it is! I’ve had this yarn in my stash forever, because I’ve been stumped as to what to make with it. I really believe that slip-stitch patterns are the perfect thing for variegated yarn. I’ve wanted to knit the Leyburn pattern for a while, too (I swatched it in some Koigu last year), and this is the perfect marriage of yarn and pattern!

I followed the pattern very loosely, as I paired the stitch pattern with a Widdershins-esque toe-up heel flap. My heel turn is a bit different from the Widdershins one, though – for some reason Widdershins heel turn is half the depth of a normal top-down heel flap. I also worked a Magic Cast On for the first time, and it was like magic! Much better than dealing with a short-row toe.

I changed around the Leyburn stitch counts, too – the foot is 34 instep stitches and 31 sole stitches, and leg was 64 stitches. I should have increased some stitches around the heel flap (or worked a longer flap), since the floats are a bit stretched out there.

This was the first time that I’ve used Lisa Souza yarns. I love the non-pooling dye job, but the yarn felt very nylony when I was knitting with it. She also sells a 100% merino sock yarn, which my pampered fingers demand, apparently. I also love the generous 4 ounce put up – I have a sizeable ball of yarn leftover.

I wrote this entire post without mentioning the obvious fraternal nature of the socks, which is really a testament to my diminishing anal retentiveness. It’s part of the beauty of handpainted yarns, right?

I’m in the minority here, but I really prefer knitting socks top-down! I hate, hate, hate working the sewn bindoff for toe-up socks, and I hate even more undoing the sewn bindoff because it’s too tight. Knitting socks toe-up also requires a bit more math before you start, since you need to know your heel depth and the number of stitches before the heel turn to figure out how many gusset increases that must be worked. I probably won’t be working any more toe-up socks, unless I’m really, really afraid of running out of yarn.

In keeping with the sock-a-month theme, the socks above were March’s pair, and these are April’s.

Pattern: None – just a 64 stitch top-down stockinette sock with an afterthought heel
Yarn: My handspun! 3 ply (navajo plied) from some Funky Carolina superwash merino in the Missed colorway

Handspun socks! There’s not much to say about these, except that I spun the yarn! I can’t believe that these turned out so well. The handspun was mostly fingering weight (I used a US 1.5 needle and got 8 stitches/inch), but was a bit thicker for the second sock’s cuff. I think that the thick portion was where I started out spinning, and the uber thin portion was toward the end. I can say that spinning worsted weight yarn goes much, much faster than a 3 ply sock yarn!

My first afterthought heel! I chose the afterthought heel so that the stripes wouldn’t be interrupted, and I heart it. Normal short-row heels don’t fit my massive instep very well, so I worked a few even rounds before decreases to give me some extra ease in that area. The instep stitches are still stretched out, so I’ll try more even rounds next time.

The right sock has very short stripes, so I ended up cutting the yarn in a couple of places on the left sock to keep the stripes from getting too out of control. I also knit the first sock on the short side, since I was afraid of running out of yarn, and I extended it an inch after the second sock was complete. I must have missed this lesson in Knitting 101, but if you pick out the cast on edge to frog the top ribbing, you’ll have to pick out every. single. stitch. No frogging from the cast on edge. I ended up snipping a stitch and cutting off the ribbing, knitting an extra inch, and then grafting the sock back together. I can’t even tell where the graft is, so yay!

February’s socks are finished! I swear I finished them last month, but have put off posting until I retook the photo. They kind of blend in with the background, no? I suppose I can be stealth kelp in these, at least on my back porch.

Pattern: Child’s First Sock in Shell Pattern, from Knitting Vintage Socks
Yarn: Yarn Botanika Merino/Tencel in colorway Rum Runner

I heart the look of this pattern! Naturally, I made some modifications:

• I changed the top rib to 2×2. I prefer my rib to consistently match (or not match) with the sock patterning, and the 2×1 rib didn’t sync with the pattern repeat.
• I flipped the chart for the second sock.
• I’ve read that the gusset depth is pretty shallow for this pattern, so I extended it to 16 slipped stitches.

The only issue I have with these socks is the yarn dye job. I really wanted a semisolid yarn, but I opened up the skein to find this:

The yarn was tied too tightly before it was dyed and the dye barely penetrated in that spot. There were lots of white flecks in about 75% the skein. The left sock leg was knit with the semisolid portion, and the patterning in the rest of the socks is obscured by all that white. Boo, but I like them anyway!

Usually my participation in Project Spectrum is purely coincidental, but this year I’m putting the teeniest bit of forethought into it.

That’s my sock yarn stash, all 12 skeins of it. I did buy some since making the sock-a-month pledge – the green skeins in the middle that look like they were attacked by cats. Because they were. You can click on the photo to see details on everything.

I fear that my sock-knitting motivation is going to wane once summer hits Houston (um, next month), but I’m going strong for now. I’m planning to knit the next bunch of socks according to Project Spectrum colors. Air is already looking like it’s going to be a weak season, but the other months are well represented in the stash. The fiery looking yarn in the upper-right will be March’s pair.

I may have accidentally added a thirteenth skein to the sock yarn pile.

That wheel that I’ve been borrowing? Well, now it’s mine. This is the first yarn that I’ve spun on it since I bought it – it’s Funky Carolina superwash merino in the Missed colorway.

I wanted to give Navajo-plying a go, so I decided to spin some skinny singles so that the 3ply yarn wouldn’t be too thick. At no point in time did I realize that I would end up with sock yarn. Yup, this is 119g and 350 yards, and pretty darn close to fingering weight. It’s by no means perfect, but I love it anyway!

Oooh, and today is also my two-year blogiversary. Crazy, huh? I’ve got to say, I do have big arrow-pierced hearts for the knitters! It’s such a great, supportive community, and I’m happy to be a part of it. Yay for yarn!

Pattern: Socks for Veronik, from the Interweave Knits Holiday ‘07 issue
Yarn: Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Sock, color Firefly

These socks certainly brighten up the dreary days around here! We don’t really get much of a winter in Houston, but the city is trying it’s best with two solid weeks of grey and drizzle. I don’t mind the gloomy weather, it gives me the rare opportunity to get some wear out of all my handknits.

Lest you think I’m always lounging about in pointy shoes and handknit socks…

The reality is that I’m working from home in my pj’s. I do like the blue, white, and yellow combo, though!

These are my first continental project and they turned out pretty well! The sole of the sock has some tension issues, but those will probably even out with wear. I followed the pattern exactly which gives you a fairly long leg in the sock. If I were to knit these again, I’d shorten them by a pattern repeat or two. The small garter edge looks pretty, but doesn’t do much to hold up the sock when faced with my generously sized calves.

This is my first time working with Lorna’s Laces for a whole project – I’ve swatched a variegated colorway of the Shepherd Sock and swapped it away because it pooled so badly. Yellow’s never my first choice, colorwise, but I’ve warmed up to it quite a bit. The yarn itself was wonderful to work with and I’d definitely use it again. I wish I could buy the semisolid colorways locally.

I realized recently that I have exactly 12 skeins of sock yarn in my stash. If I knit a sock a month, I’ll be sock yarn stashless by the end of the year, and that sounds fabulous to me.

I’m getting a jump on February’s pair – a Child’s First Sock in some Yarn Botanika merino/tencel yarn. I’ve loved this pattern since forever and I’m excited to knit these up! Shhhh, don’t tell my unfinished objects about this one.

Rob and I are going to visit the family this weekend, so this will be the perfect travel project. I’m rushing to finish the Tangled Yoke today – it’s very close to completion, and I’m determined to get some wear out of it!