Thursday, July 10, 2008

Summer of Socks my Way

I signed up for the Summer of Socks knit along but already I've broken most of the rules. (I must admit I haven't taken the time to study the rules carefully). I've knit two pairs of machine made socks that are less than the 2 inches high required - they're shortie socks, so they don't count. And I've been working on socks that were started waaaay before the summer of socks started so they don't count either. My reason for joining was because I wanted to knit a lot of socks this summer - and the heck with the rules, I'm doing this for me and not for the prizes!

But I've finished one of a pair of socks that does count! I've shown it to you when it was in progress but it's finished now and I love it. I'll do the other one when I teach the class at Double Ewe on it. It's a pattern by Jackie Erickson-Schweitzer called Toe to Cuff Lace Rib Socks. It was a joy to knit and the pattern is extremely well written. I enjoyed doing the heel flap from the bottom up (it's a toe up pattern) and it even has shaping for the ankle! The lace pattern is an easy to memorize 4 row repeat. The only beef I have with it is that it's written for worsted weight yarn and it's hard to get a worsted weight yarn with nylon in it for good wear. I have a habit of going through the toes of my socks and so I look for yarn that will take a beating. I used Brown Sheep's Nature Spun Super Wash for this one and if it wasn't for class I would have put a strand of wooly nylon in with the yarn. I'll be making this one again and maybe I'll try to figure out the math to convert it to sock yarn. Here's pictures of it on the foot and off to show how it
stretches.

4 comments:

Miss T said...

Very nice! It looks more interesting on the foot than off.

Anonymous said...

Pretty socks!

Rules are made to be broken, after all.

Anonymous said...

Are you enjoying my marathon of blog commenting??!! I do like these socks, too. The machine-knit ones look good, but the hand-knit ones look awesome (probably because I know they're hand-knit)!

Jackie E-S said...

Glad you enjoyed knitting the Toe-to-Cuff Lace Rib Socks. They look great!

The math to convert a toe-up sock like this to any weight yarn, any gauge, any size is in the workksheet for the HeartStrings Basic Toe to Cuff Sock pattern. If interested, you can check with your local yarn shop for this HeartStrings pattern. Or if they do not have, you can order from from the Shopatron network who has the closest retailer with the patterns you want here --

http://www.heartstringsfiberarts.com/a17.shtm

Happy knitting! Jackie E-S / HeartStrings