A Few Socks

I’ll start with the Christmas ones. I know, only Thanksgiving has gone by, we still have to get through Halloween and Rememberance Day, but I wanted to start these early. My mother commissioned me to make new Christmas stockings (5 of them, parents, me and 2 sisters), and not too long ago she went with me to Zellers to buy some yarn. Being the frugal woman she is, she picked out Red Heart Soft Touch which was on clearance, and bought six balls (one of the stockings might be two colours). We talked about having silver and gold worked into the stockings after, maybe with embroidery thread or something thinner, and making a fabric lining.

I’m designing this pattern, though basing it off of real sock construction. Ribbing at the top, a short row heel, toe decreases and a kitchener bind-off. They’re stockinette except for the sides of the leg, where I have a cable chosen from the Vogue Knitting Stitchionary Vol. 2, Cables. Each stocking has a different cable, and is a different colour, but they’re all the same size, knit on 5mm US8 DPNs.

I’ll write up and post a pattern when I’m done with all of them. Since all the cables are written for flat knitting, I converted them to circular. I’ve noticed already that, without the fabric lining, they aren’t very stiff and don’t hold the shape as well as I’m hoping they will with fabric inside. I probably could have gone down a needle size, but I had 1 finished already when I noticed this, and it’s not a big problem.

Here’s the one I made for my mother, with the Seven Sisters cable:

I really liked this cable. It’s not too fussy, easy to memorize, and has a nice texture to it.

For the next one, I picked a number at random and it happened to correspond with my sock, so here it is with the Flirtation cable:

If I hadn’t liked this cable so much, I might have started over with something else, because you need to cable very often. It looks beautiful, though, and as a sidenote the reverse side makes an interesting pattern.

I’m working on the one for my younger sister now, which has the Corn Rows cable.

I also started on my Jaywalker socks (that’s a Ravelry link, but you can also go to Grumperina’s Site for more information if you’re not on Rav), with the Crystal Palace Panda Soy yarn that I won from the Vegan Sock KAL contest over the summer. I asked for and received Evening Blues as my first choice, which is a deep purple with lighter blue and green. Very soft and squishy, though, like Panda Cotton, a little splitty. Here’s the first sock:

As usual Grumperina wrote a great, easy to use pattern. It’s been around for a while (since 2006?), and there are still 2300 people who have it in their queue on Ravelry to knit.