Sock Success

Winter panel from Les Saisons by Alfonse Mucha

Winter is back with a vengeance. Temperatures dropped to single and even negative digits this week and we got a bit of snow to make things more pleasant. The snow I like. A midwesterner by birth and upbringing, I am accustomed to winter and love it in it's own miserable way. I always appreciate the variety in nature and would, I think, be unhappy living somewhere the seasons didn't change. Still, one has to be calm about these changes and take them in stride. As with all things, really.



I present the first socks of 2007, and the first FOs at all, for that matter. The pattern is my own, based off of the 2 x 2 Alternating Rib stitch pattern from Charlene Schurch's Sensational Knitted Socks. I requested the book for Christmas with great hope that it would provide a smooth solution for turning a heel flap on a toe up sock. It did not. The solution Schurch provides is bulky and uncomfortable on the bottom of my foot.
Happily for me, the Knitty pattern Widdershins has instructions for the best sock heel ever. I don't personally like the short row heel, since I never get them to fit well on my foot. They're either too short and uncomfortable or too long and too comfortable. Brooke Chenoweth Creel, the innovator of Widdershins, subs a heel flap for the short rows. Like the Schurch toe-up prototype, the Widdershins heel uses increases to create the gusset, but then turns the heel with a fabulous little short-row-y pocket. After that you decrease, rather than picking up stitches which I always find fiddly and have to do at least two or three times to get the right number of stitches. I love the ease of execution in the pattern, but it's taken me a long time to figure out the math necessary to convert the heel for use with any pattern and gauge of yarn. Having done so, I'm probably more proud of these socks than any others to date.

Pattern: Original, but Frankenstein-ed. Tentatively referred to as the Twilight socks.
Needles: Size 0 Addi Turbo circ (Magic looped for the first time. Despite its rabid fans, its not bad.)
Yarn: Mountain Color's Bearfoot in Mountain Twilight. I love the rich colors of this yarn. Knitting with it was like drinking the perfect cup of hot cocoa. I hope it holds up well.
Next Time: I will trust my math (shock!) and not second guess myself. I'm satisfied with the stitch pattern I chose, but with all the other great stitches suggested in Sensational Knitted Socks, I don't think I'll be repeating it any time soon.


This is the beginning of my traditional yoked pull over. I'm just up to the point of the bust increases. So far I've already learned how to do a tubular cast on, which I thought was pointless and hard and is actually pretty cool, because it's so stretchy and not really that hard at all. I've gotten over fearing to try new things with my knitting. I mean, what's the worst that can happen? I loose some time learning how to make something work better and what mistakes to avoid. Nothing wrong with that. I hope to finish the body of the sweater tomorrow and then start on the sleeves.