Back to some knitting!
I'm starting to feel like the
Yarn Harlot, Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, when it comes to my sock knitting. At the start of this evening, I had 2 different socks on the needles using the same pattern. I like having a sock in my bag because when I'm not having to fuss about with provisional stitches for the heel, decreasing for the toe, or shaping for the heel, they're really straightforward knitting. The nice thing about self-striping yarn, or yarn dyed so as you knit it naturally forms horizontal stripes without you as the knitter having to change out yarns every stripe, is that it can look really fancy or interesting while just being plain stockinette stitch.
So I have this pair:
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| Pretty sure you've seen this one before. |
This is actually sock number 2. I finished the main body of knitting on sock number 1, minus the heel shaping, and still needed something for my bag because I can't do heel shaping in the dark of a movie theater and we were going to see
Darkest Hour, so I cast on sock number 2 right away, like a responsible knitter.
I'm actually already past the heel on this one, so this pair is moving along pretty quickly:
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| I didn't have any contrasting yarn, so that out-of-place variegated row is going to be the heel. |
I will freely admit to using the same sock pattern over and over again. The above crazy green/pink/blue/white pair is my third set of
this pattern. My printed-out copy of the pattern is dog-eared and rumpled and stained from being in my daily purse for so long, but I know it well enough to barely have to look at it anymore. I know it's 60 stitches to cast on for my size and if I have another of the socks nearby for comparison I can tell whereabouts the heel row should go and when to start decreasing for the toe.
The real reason I started on the second crazy green socks is because I had picked up the heel shaping on my second pair of these socks. Remember when they looked like this?
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| It was like this for a long time, really. |
Well, now that sock looks like this:
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| Wow, a completed sock! |
For some reason I decided the responsible thing to do with this pair was to fully complete the first sock before casting on the second. I really don't know why my approaches were so different between pairs, but there you go. As soon as I finished the main body of the sock I picked up the heel stitches and got going again.
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| I found it amusing that it had a complimentary color scheme to my 2017-Christmas-present Smartwool socks. |
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| Nice little triangle heel. |
This is the afterthought heel again, which is great for keeping the pattern of the self-striping yarn (mostly, you can see the grey-tan-grey stripe toward the left got a little lost on the other half). It also works well if you happen to find yourself running out of yarn at the end of the toes because you can just put in coordinating yarn for the heels and toes as needed.
They fit pretty well, just a tiny bit short along the length of my foot and my usual problem of large calf muscles that taper quickly to my ankle, so without a lot of 1x1 ribbing to hold them up (which I don't like the look of and is boring to knit) or decreasing/increasing along the leg for the same purpose (which I never remember to plan for or write down so I can duplicate it), I just have to deal with some bagginess at the ankles/leg bits.
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| I also managed to tidy up the gappy bit at the corner of the heel shaping. Yay! |
Overall, I still like this pattern (clearly) and it's well on its way to being a staple of my knitting cycle, especially as I keep leaving sock yarn on my Christmas list, so my in-laws keep getting it for me :) Not a bad way to go.
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| They clearly know my colors. |
