Vandyke Check Socks

I have been knitting a pair of socks for my sister - just finished them.  My New Year's knitting resolution was to knit both socks of a pair at the same time (to avoid mismatches, not to mention second sock syndrome), starting with this pair.  I tried knitting with two circular needles, but found it too awkward - too much cable to contend with - and so used magic loop with a single circular needle instead. 

The yarn is Regia Graphics Color sock wool.  My sister wanted a pair of socks to wear with her Joules printed rubber ankle boots - I haven't seen them, but here is the matching handbag.

I think the yarn is a pretty good match to the colours in the handbag, especially as I didn't go looking for it, but found it more or less by accident - after my knitting friend Cath Harris died, her family had a coffee morning in aid of the charity Myeloma UK to find homes for some of her extensive stash of wool and other craft materials, and I found it there.

I knitted the socks toe-up, using the same basic construction (German short-row heel, with a gusset) that I have been using recently, because I know it fits me very well. It turns out that my socks fit my sister very well too.

I didn't want to use a complicated design with this variegated yarn, so I chose the Vandyke Check stitch pattern from Barbara Walker's A Treasury of Knitting Patterns.  I have used it before - for the first pair of toe-up socks I ever knitted, made for my daughter in 2011.

The pattern really doesn't show up very well, but I do like the texture given by the blocks of knit and purl stitches, so I'm happy with the choice.

I hope you enjoy wearing your socks, Margaret.  I have enough yarn left to knit a pair of socks for me, too, but I think I'll have a break from socks for a while.

Matching Socks

I finished another pair of socks (for me) a couple of weeks ago.   They are like the last two pairs I knitted - the structure is based on the On the Other Foot socks I made in Ann Kingstone and Sarah Alderson's knit-along, but these are quite plain, double rib.  I had some variegated sock yarn I wanted to use, so a fancy pattern wouldn't have shown up well.

The yarn was dyed for me by my friend Steph of Millhouse Designs (stephscraftybits on Etsy).  The special thing about the yarn is that she dyed two strands together, so that the colour changes happen in the same places.  So knitting a sock from each strand means that they match. 

I wanted colours that aren't too exciting (I'm not into wearing brightly coloured socks yet), so they are grey at the toe, turning into indigo blue at the cuff.  With winter in mind, I made the leg part longer than the last pair I made.  They are proving very cosy.  I'll knit some more.  I have two skeins of variegated sock yarn that are basically grey - I should be safe colourwise with those (not too exciting) and I think that they might suit a fancy pattern too.

On The Other Foot

Two years ago, I knitted a pair of fingerless mittens in a Mystery Knit Along, run by my friends Sarah Alderson and Ann Kingstone.  You can see my (almost) finished mittens here.  (I did finish them, and posted some photos here, but the colours in that post look a bit murky - they are in fact much nicer than that.)   Now, Sarah and Ann are running another MKAL (Mystery Knit ALong) - this time a pair of socks.   I signed up for it, and looked for some suitable sock yarn.  I haven't found an actual bricks-and-mortar shop near here that sells sock yarn, except the stall in Huddersfield Market Hall, which has some in very basic, utilitarian colours like dark grey.   And a lot of sock yarn is self-striping, which won't do for this project.   But I have now got some very lovely yarn online from Eden Cottage Yarns. 

It's their Titus yarn, in a mottled brown called Compost.  (I'm new to hand-knitted socks, and almost all my everyday, shop-bought socks are black.  Occasionally black with stripes of another colour on the toes and ankles.  A few thick pairs in grey or fawn.   So I can't suddenly start knitting brightly-coloured socks and expect to feel comfortable wearing them.  Baby steps.)

The MKAL has several stages (five?) and two options at each stage.  (One designed by Sarah, the other by Ann, but we don't know which is which.)   The first stage (last week) was the toe, with a choice of two unusual construction methods.  I chose the spiral toe, which has four evenly-spaced sets of increases spiralling out from the starting point. 

We were told at the outset that there would be colour-work options, but that it would be possible to knit the socks all in one colour.  I do have another colour available, but I haven't decided yet whether to use it.  We are currently on stage 2 (the foot part), and yes, one of the options uses stranded knitting with two or three colours, but I've chosen the other option, which is a lace and cables pattern.  I think there will still be a possibility of using two colours for the ankle, but I'll wait and see what the options are before deciding. 

  
There's still quite a bit more of the foot to do, but it should be finished by next Friday when the instructions for stage 3 will be published. 

It's Christmas! Socks!

Now that Christmas has arrived, I can reveal - tada!- that I have been knitting more socks, as Christmas presents.  (The pair of fluffy socks that I wrote about here were also a Christmas present.)  I made one pair from the sock yarn that I dyed at the workshop I went to at Spun in November.  They are photographed straight off the needles and look rather weird without feet in them  I used plain stocking stitch for the foot part, to show off the colours of the yarn, but introduced four little cables into the double rib around the ankle, to make it more interesting.  I am very pleased with them.  The yarn is very soft , and should be hard-wearing too, as it's merino and nylon.  I have enough yarn left to make myself a pair of fingerless mitts, I think.  
 



I have also knitted another sock (only one so far) in Cygnet 4-ply yarn, in a lovely blue-purple colour. The pattern is a modification of Wendy Johnson's diagonal lace socks. 

I did at least manage to finish the first sock in time to show it to the recipient (by webcam) on Christmas Day.  I think I have mastered a good set of techniques for toe-up socks - magic cast on, short-row heel, 'surprisingly stretchy bind-off' - although I this was the first sock where I was happy with the look of the short-row heel.  So now I'm getting bored with knitting socks.  When I've finished the second diagonal lace sock, I'll knit something else for a while.


The hand-dyed socks were for my daughter, and we also sent her a Henderson's Relish t-shirt (black with an orange design, to match the labels on the bottles).  She has never tried Henderson's Relish, but she can relate to the slogan (Strong and Northern). 

By the way, we noticed Henderson's Relish on sale in Waitrose in Sheffield when we were there to buy Christmas food.  (For overseas readers, Waitrose is an upscale supermarket chain.)  According to the Henderson's web site, this is the only branch of Waitrose where you can buy Relish.  We were pleased to see that the locals had been stocking up on Henderson's for Christmas - the other sauces (Lea and Perrins, HP sauce and the rest) were untouched, but there was hardly any Henderson's left.

Magic and Surprisingly Stretchy

I have finished my second pair of toe-up socks - this time they are intended to be bed-socks, and the yarn is a soft, slightly fluffy yarn with a good proportion of wool and alpaca with acrylic (Wendy Osprey).   It is an aran-weight yarn and I used 4 mm needles to give quite a dense fabric. I have 30g left out of the 100g that I bought, so almost enough for another sock.

I have changed my sock-knitting technique a little bit.  At the dyeing workshop two weeks ago, someone told me about Judy's magic cast-on. It really is an amazing method - you cast on the number of stitches that you need for the narrowest part of the toe, and then start knitting in rounds straightaway, increasing at both sides of the toe until you have the number of stitches you need for the main part of the sock. And the most amazing part is that the casting on is invisible - there is no detectable break in the knitting over the end of the toe.  Magic!

This is a lot easier, to my mind, than the short-row method I used for my first pair of toe-up socks, which started with a provisional cast-on and used short rows to shape the toe-cap. Unpicking the provisional cast-on is a bit fiddly, and there is the slight disadvantage that you end up with one fewer stitch than you cast on in the first place. 

By the time I had got the the end of the first sock, someone else told me about Jeny's Surprisingly Stretchy Bind-off (cast-off in British English). Another really useful invention.  I had been intending to use a sewn cast-off for these socks, to keep the top stretchy, but thought it might be tricky given such a fluffy yarn. Jeny's Surprisingly Stretchy Bind-off is a variation on the usual cast-off method with two needles.  It is very easy, and indeed surprisingly stretchy.

 Next.... another pair of toe-up socks with the skein of sock yarn I dyed at the workshop.

Toe-up Socks

I have been knitting a cardigan for months now, and it is not turning out well.  I have knitted most of the body twice, and I'm still not happy with it - it's all very disheartening.  So I decided to knit a pair of socks for my daughter - she likes to wear fancy socks and  I don't particularly.

I have only knitted one pair of socks before and they were not a great success (as described here), but only because they were knitted in bamboo yarn and so went very baggy as soon as I wore them.  The actual knitting was satisfying -  the construction is so clever.  This time I wanted to knit them toe-up, because I find casting on for the ankle very fiddly and prone to disasters (like getting a twist into the knitting when you join it up, or dropping a stitch on the first round).

The basic pattern is by Wendy Johnson, free through Ravelry or from her web site (follow the links to "Free Patterns" and then it's the Detailed Toe-up Sock Pattern).  Her pattern produces a plain pair of socks - the idea is just to demonstrate the techniques of toe-up socks with a short-row toe and heel.  So I used a stitch pattern from Barbara Walker's Treasury to add some texture and interest on the instep and ankle.  It's the Vandyke Check pattern (mostly chosen because it has an 8-stitch pattern repeat and I had 64 stitches in total, but it has turned out very well).  It is made up of blocks of stocking stitch and reverse stocking stitch, so it doesn't add any bulk.   The yarn is 4-ply 75% wool and 25% polyamide from Cygnet, in olive green.    

The socks fit very well and my daughter is very pleased with them.  (I can tell because she said "You can knit me lots more of these!")