Not the Usual Suspects
Another pair finished! I’ll update my sidebar after this.
I used a lone Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Sock skein in the Bucks Bar colorway. You can see in the below picture how subtle the colors blend and stripe.
(Look at that green background!!! Perfect for Project Spectrum May.) I started out with the plan to make a toe-up version of One Skein Sockettes.
So I started with a pointy toe (I think the pattern yarn used is maybe sportweight and I didn’t adjust for the gauge difference). I figured it would be OK because Grandma seems to like her shoes and socks snug.
Around and around in plain sockinette for the foot. (No surprises there.)
When I got close to the heel, I thought I would do a short-row toe, but at the last minute, I decided to try a toe-up version of the heel-flap and gusset construction.
That’s pretty much when I left any semblance of following the pattern and started winging it. I made a very wide heel turn, so the gussets are relatively shallow as well. (I only picked up 14 stitches along the heel extensions).
You’ll notice that I didn’t do any type of slip-stitch or padded heel flap. I just didn’t feel like it, plus I worried that it would use up more yarn. After the gusset decreases were finished, the heel didn’t seem high enough. In more experimentation, I added six short-rows around the heel stitches, and that worked well. I will have to try that with short-row heels… that’s usually when I have that problem.
I twisted all the knit stitches in the K2P2 ribbing. I had done this with K1P1 ribbing, but not with k2P2, and I like how it looks. The cuffs were 2 inches long when I determined I had just enough left for bindoff.
None of the bindoffs I tried were loose enough. I ended up tinking back five rows. Then I doubled the total number of stitches by increasing in between each stitch. I knit two tubular stockinette rows (including the row where I increased), and Kitchener grafted together the stitches to finish off the cuff.
I probably didn’t need to increase every other stitch, but I liked the ruffle edge the process created. I also used yarn-overs and the eyelets just underneath the hem or bind-off is a pretty effect, but it’s not easily noticeable while wearing, etc. I did make a mistake, I didn’t translate the tubular stockinette instructions from back-and-forth to round knitting, so the inside layer actually is reverse stockinette. I couldn’t get a picture of the effect, but it does create a distinct RS and WS at the top where I grafted the stitches together.
In the end, I’m happy with the various things I tried and wiould like to try improving some of these techniques sometime.
Here’s a quick snapshot of Grandma wearing her new socks. I’m sorry it’s blurry; I snapped the pictures very quickly and the light wasn’t the greatest either.
