sock innovations

I took a one day sock class from Cat Bordhi. The class was based on her book with the odd title:

Personal Footprints for Insouciant Sock Knitters: Book Two in the New Pathways for Sock Knitters Series

a bit of a mouthful if I do say.

But I digress. The purpose of the class was to expose a new way of addressing the creation of knitted socks. Cat Bordhi is famous for being one of those people who sees things differently and this was no different. It was, in a single word, GREAT!

These are the first pair of socks I made using her new approach. You mark where the leg is going to come in based on your personal (cardboard) footprint and then knit all the way to the end of the foot without doing anything else but some decreases. Then, without binding off the heel, you go back to the "leg place", insert your needles back in where you previously put a lifeline thread and ........

CUT A HOLE!

Sort of like afterthought pockets as designed by Elizabeth Zimmerman but the edges are improved. Then you knit the leg and once you can actually try on the sock you can knit the heels closed. I did one sock to the point where I inserted the lifelines in the one day class.

I then finished the heel part and the cutting part and added the pattern for the leg part and bound them off. The best news is that they fit PERFECTLY and the heels feel really good. It was quite exciting in my sock life. Really !

 I had already completed this purpleish sock with my standard til now eye of partridge heel and toe and was laboring on through second sock syndrome. Instead -- consistency being the hobgoblin of small minds -- I took the second sock (I had already done the toe and was partway up the foot) and gave it the Bordhi treatment. I used my cardboard foot pattern, inserted the lifelines at the place I determined they should be and continued knitting to the heel without actually closing the heel up.

This is what the heel looks like right now

And this is what the two socks look like right now from the front.  You can't even see where I picked up the stitches and cut the hole.  I will post it again when it is done, but having tried it on I can say that the new heel fits me better than the heel on Sock Number 1 of this pattern.

I think I can adapt this to almost any toe up sock.   Exciting!

(I know, I know, I might need to get a life here but it still is exciting.)

The saga of socks

These socks were the Jacobean pattern socks that were from a Yahoo group. I have been knitting socks for eons, and I thought that this time I would use a different pattern from the one in my head. Well........back to my head for the next ones. I had one sock completed for a couple of months and could not seem to finish the second. Time for surgery. I should have taken a picture, but forgot. I had the second sock to a reasonable length, but 2 full pattern repeats short of sock 1, so I took the scissors to sock 1. You can't unravel a sewn bind off, so I just cut it off, unravelled it down to the same number of pattern repeats as sock 2.
and finished them both off. Voila!! a pair of socks. They are in Bambolaine which has 25% natural bamboo mixed with the wool. It is described as soft, but I beg to differ, and after washing it is the same as before. I think that played a bigger part in the semifroggo than the boring pattern, but now they are done and I will have more socks for winter and I CAN START ANOTHER PAIR WITH WOOL I LIKE!!!

Hmmmm....

added later.. Operator error. At the risk of being annoying I am going to load the pictures again, so those of you reading me on google reader or bloglines may see me more than once.. if so... suck it up, stuff happens and the pics re a lot nicer when they embiggen.

Those pictures are not getting bigger when I click on them. Has Blogger down something that I have missed? They are done the same as the previous million pictures, I think...

As a test, a gratuitous picture shot a while ago to see if it enbiggers when you click on it. If not, complain to blogger, you can be sure I will..

This is the current state of the socks from hell.. or one of them. The other is done.

socks again

Facing miles and miles of garter stitch, I find myself contemplating why I am a sock knitter. Or IF I am a sock knitter. I guess the pictures speak for themselves, so here are some of the pictures.

These were probably the first pairs I ever made. 2 skeins of yarn, 3 pairs of socks. I learned about how top down socks can be too tight to put on. If you notice the thin line of another color of yarn at the top of one of the red pairs, I cut the tops off and added a sewn bind off to replace the original tops.

On this pair I learned toe up and I also found eye of partridge toes and heels, halfway through, the right one has them, the left one only has heels.

These were toe up from a pattern that was top down. By this point I think I was really a sock knitter, not just playing with it.

Monkeys ... need I say more?

Fair isle knitting of my own creation. The left ones are merino, the right ones are cotton. I am not a knitter for cotton, though in the mass picture over on my picture blog you can see one more pair.. I am wearing them... that are cotton fair isle that I do love dearly.

In addition to these, I have also finished 3 pairs each, or maybe 4 each, for Bob and Fred, where I have spent Christmas many years, a pair for Travis and a pair for Jenni, and a pair for Josephine, all blogless for a variety of reasons.

I've also done 2 sweaters since knitting came back to me a few years ago and a variety of small things, but it seems that once I figured out socks I always have a pair going somewhere, even including the Jacobean socks from hell.

They have been torn back 4 separate times. It is a pattern that does not lend itself to A train work, and when it does get knitted it seems to be particularly prone to holes, thin spots and general insanity. But one is done so they WILL get finished.

Because I know some of you care not one fig for knitting, I will only say one other thing... toe up, 2 circular needles, one sock at a time. If you know what I mean, you're a sock knitter ... and I am now, despite the Jacobean diversion, facing miles and miles of garter stitch.