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Straight-Laced Socks

July 13th, 2006 | View Comments

Speaking of de-feet…

Pattern: Straight-Laced Socks, from Knitty
Yarn: Fortissima Socka, #1005, 2 skeins
Needles: 2 sets 16″ Addi Turbos, US 1 (2.5mm)

This was my first pair of socks, ever! I feel like I’ve come of age as a knitter. I wet-blocked both socks, squeezing as much water out as I could, and then laying them on a towel and making them sock-shaped. Blocking softened up the yarn nicely. The socks also grew a wee bit after blocking, which was great because they were a little tight before and now they fit better. I probably should have made the foot or toe a little longer, but they still fit pretty well.

Knitting these socks was tremendously fun—lace! socks! what’s not to love?—and kind of trying, as I struggled with both the yarn and the pattern.

As I mentioned in my previous post about the socks, the yarn is snarly. I would barely manage to knit through one round of yarn barf before the skeins would barf again. I don’t know if these particular skeins were horribly neglected or abused in the shop or what, but if there’s such a thing as feral yarn, this was it.

I also had three points in the pattern where I got stuck.

1. Lace Pattern. The lace pattern, as written, is asymmetric. If you’re a fan of symmetry like I am, change the first k2tog to a ssk.

2. Heel. The pattern says to work all of one heel and pick up the gusset stitches before working on the other, but you don’t actually need to do that. You can work both heel flaps back and forth at the same time. However, you do need to do the entire heel turn and pick up the first set of gusset stitches on one, and then the other.

   I also had a little confusion about heel flap length, but I chalk that up to being an inexperienced sock knitter.

3. Toe. After going over and over it, I have to conclude that the pattern has an error in it. The pattern seems to have decreases on one side of the foot only, since the decreases are only at the beginning and the end of a round. Based on this, you’d need to knit 52 rows to finish the toe decreases and that just seems like too many, considering that gauge is 30 rows per 4″/10cm. It seems like other people also had toe issues with this pattern.

   I wound up doing four decreases every other round, one pair of decreases on each side of the foot, and then kitchenering when I had 16 stitches left—8 stitches on each needle. The resulting toe looks a lot more like the one in the pattern picture than when I was trying to follow the directions.

Despite the problems, I’m now fully drawn into the Sock Knitting Dark Side. I’ve been eyeing my stash of sock yarn trying to decide what to cast on for next. The Embossed Leaves Socks? Hedera? Or BOTH?

• Two, Two, One
• A Bit More

Tags: crafts, hand knitting, hobbies, knitting, knitting patterns, needles, sock knitting, sock patterns, Socks & Slippers, Yarn

Yvonne posted this on July 13th, 2006 @ 12:56pm in Finished Objects, Socks & Slippers | Permalink to "Straight-Laced Socks"

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