It’s Furious Balancing

I am particularly taken with sock knitting. Socks are practical, beautiful, and endlessly entertaining by their variety. Sock knitting is also very portable and easily stashed in a purse.  I can’t say the same for a sweater.

I’m a top-down, heel flap, DPN¹ kind of sock knitter, which I strangely believe is “more traditional” even though there is a tradition of toe-up sock knitting in Eastern Europe. Or at least I think Eastern Europe is one of several places with a history of toe-up socks, and perhaps the Levantine. I’m a knitter, not a knitting historian.  /shrug

I intend to learn how to knit toe-up socks.  Eventually. I also intend to learn conversational French and Latin ballroom dancing, so there you go.

When I almost-finished the brown alpaca cardigan, I was looking about for an easy, soothing knitting project. ²  I decided that some German self-striping sock yarn and a k3p1 rib was the way to go.

Pattern: Sock Recipe: A Good Plain Sock in Stephanie Pearl-McPhee’s Knitting Rules.   Not truly a pattern, but guidelines for knitting a sock with any yarn, any gauge, and any needle.  I worked k1p1 ribbing for about an inch, then switched to k3p1 ribbing.  Standard slip stitch heel and basic toe.

Yarn: Meilenweit Magdalena Neuner from Lana Grossa, color 8331.

Needles: US size 1 and 0.  I switched to the smaller needles about an inch before the heel flap to customize the fit.

Size: Small-ish.  Made for a person with gargantuan calves and dainty size 6½ feet.

Mods: I shortened the number of rows in the heel flap by 10-15% since I have “short” heels.

They fit perfectly and, more importantly, Emma approves.

* * * * *

1. Double pointed needles [↩]
2. What brown alpaca cardigan? I hear you inquire.  It’s almost-finished.  It needs buttons.  I have the buttons — lovely copper-colored ones with wyverns on them– I’m just not so great at actually finishing an FO.  So, you’ll see it when I get the buttons sewn on.  They’re right here on my desk.  Really.  Right next to my almost-finished 2009 income tax returns. [↩]

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 3rd, 2010 at 9:20 am and is filed under Knitting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.