Week of Socks!: Baudelaire socks for me

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Ah, we've reached our week-long excursion into the glorious land of socks. And now you're up to speed on what's been going on knitting-wise with me. Although, I guess I should say that these were finished a couple of weeks ago, which means that they weren't really completed in the summer. But I guess that's neither here not there.

Yarn - Dale of Norway Baby Ull (100% wool, 180 yards) in firetruck red. I bought 2 skeins of this and one skein of pale gray to make a second pair of red herring socks, but I just never could bring myself to attempt the color knitting again. It's a nice, soft, squashy yarn.

Needles - Magic looped on size 1 Addi Turbos.

Pattern - Baudelaire from Knitty, which I've done before for sockapolooza. But this time, I shifted the pattern so it's spread across the outer edge of the foot/side of the leg. And, as promised in the spiral socks post, I mirrored them for extra-cool symmetricalness. Besides this obvious deviation from the original pattern, I made the following modifications:

• I worked it toe-up and did a short-row heel.
• I add calf shaping on the inside leg about 4" into the leg.
• I wanted the lace section to neatly divide the sock in half, so I slightly altered the pattern to be 13 sts wide.

Week of Socks!: Vinnland socks

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This is about the point at which I started running out of creativity. As explained below, both the pattern and the yarn are repeats and/or cop-outs in one way or another. I blame that on the fact that I was making them in August while I was working on drafts of like 6-7 articles (seriously, I was swamped) and visiting the family back in Texas. Didn't have a lot of brain power available, you know?

Yarn - 2 skeins of Lang Jawoll Cotton (49% new wool, 35% cotton, and 16% nylon) I had leftover from these socks. This yarn is still pretty awesome. Good thing I overbought (I might actually have enough for another pair lying around.)

Needles - Magic looped on size 1 Addi Turbos.

Pattern - The Vinnland pattern from the Anti-Craft. I really like this pattern, but if you're astute you may have noticed that in the grand sock queue, it's been slated to socks for Van, not me. Well, hopefully I'll finally make him some awesome Vinnland socks of his own one day (I really am planning to, I swear), so I'll consider these a dry run. Hell, maybe if I have enough I'll make him a matching pair out of the same yarn. The pattern called for it to be done toe-up with a short-row heel, so the only modification I made was using the magic 8 CO instead of doing a short-row toe and adding some calf shaping (see the photo above).

Week of Socks!: Spiral socks for me

(click for bigger. Also, note that though you can't actually see it in full, the leg of the socks is about mid-calf, so about 10" long. Yeah, should have taken better pictures, my apologies.)

I've made socks like this before - once for my mom, and once for my sister. And I've made awesome spirally hats (a set of them from the same awesome yarn, one for me, and one for Dani). But, until now, I've never made myself spirally socks. This terrible oversight has now been rectified and my life can go on.

Yarn - Yarn Botanika Radiance (merino/tencel blend, 400 yards) in jewel. This yarn is odd. It's lovely, with a really fluid drape and a nice shine to it, but it's not terribly soft. Not scratchy, just a bit stiff. I think it might be due to an overabundance of dye or something, it might soften with a couple of washes. But a very pretty dye job nonetheless.

Needles - Magic looped on size 1 Addi Turbos.

Pattern - A pretty simple travelling yarnover stitch loosely drawn from the spiral boot socks pattern. I followed the pattern for my sister's socks, but not my moms, and this one I did mostly by sight but used the pattern's trick of using the yarnovers to incorporate calf shaping. Basically, that means that every inch or so I didn't decrease once when I added a yarnover (which if you look really, really closely, you can spot).

I worked them toe-up, casting on 28 sts and increasing to 60. A short-row heel was worked with all sts wrapped but the center 10. The cuff was about an 1.5 inches of 1x1 rib. The actual spiral pattern was worked starting with 8 sts between YOs, and eventually went up to 12 sts between YOs. And, last but not least, I mirrored the direction the spirals travel in because I love symmetry (stay tuned for more symmetry!).

Week of Socks!: Smockings

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Like the socks I posted yesterday, this is a pattern I've been toying with for awhile and finally got around to actually fleshing out and knitting up. I think these came out pretty well, too.

Yarn - Claudia Hand Painted (100% wool, 175 yards) fingering weight in Ingrid's Blues. I've actually had this yarn for years, Jon bought it as a Valentine's day present for me awhile back, so it's all special and stuff.

Needles - Magic looped on size 1 Addi Turbos.

Pattern - I wanted to do something that had a little texture and visual interest, but I was afraid that the vibrancy of the colorway would overwhelm something very intricate. I'd been toying with the idea of incorporating smocking into socks for awhile, and it seemed like a good fit. I worked it toe-up (CO 24 sts, increased to 60) with a short-row heel (wrapped all but the center 10 sts).

All the smocking goodness was done on a 20 st-wide panel on the top of the foot/front of the leg. When I was working it, the panel was just done as a rib (p2, k1, p2, k1, p2, k1, p2, k1, p2, k1, p2, k1, p2 with the 5 remaining sts on either side done in stockinette). The sole/back of the leg were worked in plain stockinette, with one set of calf increases (inc 2 at center back every other row 5 times) about 6" up the leg. The cuff was done in about an inch or so of p2, k1 rib.

The smocking itself was done as a finishing technique after the whole thing was all knitted up. I used this as a rough starting point, and it basically entailed threading the leftover yarn up six stitches and wrapping the seventh stitch together with the knit stitch to the immediate right of it. I really like the way it turned out, the closeup above gives you a sense of how it looks unstretched and the top photo is how it looks when you wear it.

Week of Socks!: Split Cable socks

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I really really like this pair. I think this might be the highlight of Week of Socks! for me. It's just one of those nice little projects where I love everything about the end product, and I think they'll get a lot of wear this winter.

Yarn - This is from Zeitgeist yarns, and it's lovely. It's super soft (though slightly thicker than I usually use) and the shifting shades of blue are subtle and complicated at once. Really good stuff, I definitely recommend checking out her yarns. And her blog is awesome, too.

Needles - Like I said, it's on the slightly thick side, so I magic looped it on size 2 Addi Turbos.

Pattern - This one I totally made up from scratch. I've been batting around this idea for a good, long while and kept tinkering with it until I had the perfect yarn for it. I worked them toe-up (CO 28 sts, increases are done in 1x1 rib pattern on the top up to 56 sts that eventually feeds into the cable panels, you can see it if you look closely at the photos) with a gusset and a sort-of dutch heel (with the cable pattern worked along the edges and the center part of the heel just knit in regular stockinette with no slipped stitches).

Calf shaping was added by increasing 2 sts at the center back every other row three times when the leg was 6" long and once more when it was 8" long. The cuff is just an inch or so of 1x1 ribbing.

The cables twists on the sides of the foot/heelare simple mirrored braids, and they join when the leg starts into a more complicated 6-stranded cable panel along the outsides of the leg. Eventually, I'll chart it out more thoroughly and post it so I can make more of these bad boys.

Week of Socks!: More Jaywalkers for me

This is the second pair of jaywalkers I've made for myself (here's the first pair). I finished these sometime in May, I believe, and rather like the way they turned out.

Yarn - Spunky Eclectic¹ skinny superwash sock yarn in Dinah. This yarn was a total impulse purchase and when it arrived in the mail I wasn't really sure what to do with it. I wasn't sure I really liked the colors after all and it looked all wrong when I rolled it into a ball. But I actually really like the way it knit up. Sometimes yarn surprises you that way - there are some skeins I've bought that are just ridiculously beautiful int heir natural skein-ish state and then look kind of wonky in actual knitted garment form, and this one was quite pleasantly the reverse.

Needles - It was indeed quite skinny sock yarn, and I believe I magic looped it on 47" size 0 Addi Turbos.

Pattern - The ubiquitous Jaywalker pattern. I mean, it's ubiquitous for a reason, right? It's easy and it looks great with crazy hand-dyed yarn like this. I made these mods (and they are about the same as always):

• Went toe-up this time instead of top down.
• I worked a short-row heal instead of doing the whole gusset song and dance. This helped nicely to keep the yarn from pooling, actually.

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¹I totally joined the Spunky Eclectic sock yarn club, so I guess that whole out-of-yarn-thing is now officially being rectified.

Week of Socks!: Fargyles for Jon

I have seven brand news pairs of socks to present, because I did knit this summer, but through a combination of being away from my computer for extended periods of time, not being able to find my camera, not being able to find my camera's USB cord, laziness, etc., I haven't found the time to post them. But today, while I caught up with last (and increasingly terrible) season of Heroes, I've finally finished them and taken some barely adequate photographs of them. Yay, progress!
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(tiny tissue box included in photo for scale. Jon's feet are gigantic)

I finished these ages ago, sometime in late April/early May. But, actually wrangling Jon into taking pictures with them on was hard, since he's constantly wandering off or losing them or both. In any case, what this means is that I am (more or less) done with the sock queue! Check it:

1. Charade socks for Brian
2. River Rapid socks for Jennie
3. Vinnland socks for Van (permanent hiatus)
   
4. Millicent socks for Sam
5. Rhiannon socks for Mandy
6. Spiral boots socks for Leila
   
7. Socks for Mom
8. Socks for Stepdad
9. Something sockish for Dani (possibly booties?)
   
10. Indestructible socks for Jon

Awesome. Finally. Guess this means I need to start a new one, though. Which, since I am now officially out of sock yarn (the Week of Socks flood of productivity ate through my stash), means I need to buy more yarn. Food for thought. But back to the socks:

Yarn - The foot/leg were worked in Peace Fleece DK (70% wool, 30% mohair). It took one skein in violet (Jon specifically requested purple socks). But, as his feet are massive, there wasn't quite enough to go around, so I did the toes/heels with some Knitpicks Swish DK (123 yards, 100% superwash merino) in mist leftover from these. The Peace Fleece, in addition to being a total hippie yarn that tries to end what's left of the cold war, is pleasantly sheep-smelling. Lots of lanolin.

Needles - magic looped 'em on my trusty 40" size 3 addi turbo circulars.

Pattern - Based it off the Fargyle pattern from Knitty, which is a nice mindless sort of pattern if you don't mind all the purling. I made the following modifications:

• I did them toe-up instead of top-down.
  
• I worked an afterthought heel instead of a dutch heel/gusset.
• The original pattern calls for a 23 stitch wide fargyle pattern, and I increased this to 30 stitches. I just took the logic of the existing pattern and made it bigger for the most part.