Ruthless Knitting Archive

Pattern: Just your basic toe-up sock
Size: Women’s medium/large
Yarn: Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Sock Multi (80 percent superwash wool, 20 percent nylon; 215 yds per 2 oz skein)
Yardage: About 1.25 skeins
Source: Iris Fine Yarns 
Needles: US 0 (2.0 mm) double-pointed metal needles
Gauge: No idea — I forgot to check.
Notes: By the skin of my teeth, I managed to finish my mom’s socks before our vacation ended on Saturday morning, and she agreed to model them for your viewing pleasure.

These were pretty straightforward socks. They have what I think Charlotte Schurch calls an "easy toe" in her book Sensational Knitted Socks: I began with a simple little stockinette rectangle 18 stitches wide by 8 rows long, then picked up stitches along the three sides and increased at each corner on every other row until I had 18 stitches on each needle. After that, it was just round and round to the heel.

Because I reached the heel of the first sock on the day I was taking Lucy Neatby’s sock class, I used her directions to create a simple garter-stitch short-row heel. Perhaps the most interesting thing about this heel is that it uses more than 50 percent of the stitches on the sock, which Lucy says creates a more comfortable heel. For the second sock, which I didn’t knit for a few months after the first was completed, I didn’t have her directions with me, and I’m not entirely confident that I used the same method of wrapping. Still, the two socks seem passably similar. Mom seems to like them, so I call the project a success!

This entry was posted on Monday, June 23rd, 2008 at 9:49 am and is filed under Finished Objects. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.