The joy of socks

 
Today I finished my toe-up socks, and I just love the result. The patterns in the two skeins of DROPS Garnstudio Fabel Print yarn synchronized quite nicely along the entire foot part of the socks, but then they started to drift slightly. Still, I think the effect of similar but not identical patterns make the socks look playful and fun. 

I had decided to continue knitting until all the yarn was used up, and I did. The end result was quite a bit longer than I had expected, but I don't mind at all. The immediate use for these socks will be to keep my feet warm when I attend my yearly Zhineng Qigong retreat, starting next week. We spend most of our days in a gym hall, that can be quite cool if the weather isn't hot. I'm wearing the socks as I write this, and I just love the warm, cozy feeling around my calves. 

I knitted these socks with no pattern. The inspiration for this project came when I ran into a couple of videos on YouTube on knitting two socks at a time toe up. So I googled around a bit, and found enough information to feel I could pull it off. The good thing about knitting toe-up, is that you can try the sock on as you go along, which also made it less of a scary process to knit without a pattern.

I kept note of what I did in order to create a repeatable pattern if the result was good, or to learn from my mistakes if it wasn't. You can find the pattern and some of the resources I used below. 

There were some interesting surprises and adaptations I had to make along the way. Here's a list of the learnings I can still remember:

  • Turkish cast-on was the least fiddly cast-on for needles this tiny (2.0 mm = US 0). I tried some other cast-ons, but with all of them I kept dropping stitches in the first round.
  • Trying the fit is better than measuring and calculating. I started by measuring the width of my foot and calculating the number of stitches based on the yarn gauge, just to know what number of stitches I was aiming for when the toe part was done. But I ended up stopping the increases much earlier, when the actual size of the sock felt comfortable on my foot.
 
 
  • German short rows is a fun heel method. I had originally planned to use a flap method for the heel, but while I was knitting the foot of the sock, I came across a video that describes German short rows in a very clear and comprehensive way. So I did German short row heels with slipped stitches on the return. Incredibly easy and the result is really neat and tidy.
 
  • Decreases make the ankle look nicer. I had not really planned to do decreases after the heel, but as I tried the sock on I decided that the sock would hug the ankle in a nicer way if I decreased a bit. So I decreased 10 stitches.
  • Moving stitches is easy with clippy markers. After the decreases, I had 10 stitches less in the back than in the front, which made my magic loop knitting a bit awkward. With regular knitting in the round or magic loop, it's easy to just slip stitches from one side to the other, but with two socks on the needles, it isn't trivial. The tricky part is when you want move stitches on the side that is adjacent to the other sock. Enter the clippy marker. I just slipped the stitches I wanted to move onto a clippy marker and left them hanging until I came around to that sock on the other side. Then I just slipped the stitches onto the needle. 
  • My favourite stretchy bind-off works well for socks. The stretchy bind-off I like I learned in a Craftsy class on lace knitting by Eunny Jang. You knit the two first stitches, put them back on the left needle and then knit them together through the back loop. Then continue to knit one, put both stitches back on the left needle and knit them together through the back loop. I prefer to do this bind-off with a crochet needle in my right hand (instead of the right knitting needle.) 
So all in all, this was a fun and educational project, with a very satisfactory end result. I have a long print version of the Fabel yarn, and I'm itching to start another pair using the pattern that evolved from this project. 

Here's the pattern, and below it some resources I used. You can also find this project on ravelry.

Jeanettes toe-up socks
Turkish cast-on 8 
Row 0: knit 
Row 1: knit 1, make 1 (16 sts) 
Row 2: knit 
Row 3: knit 2, make one (24 sts) 
Row 4-5: knit 
Row 6: knit 3, make one (32 sts) 
Row 7-9: knit 
Row 10: knit 4, make one (40 sts) 
Row 11-14: knit 
Row 15: knit 5, make 1 (48 sts) 
Row 16-20: knit 
Row 21: knit 6, make 1 (56 sts) 
Row 22-27: knit 
Row 28: knit 7, make 1 (64 sts) 
Row 29-35: knit, then try on to see if the size is good.
Knit until the sock measures 18,5 cm (5 cm from final length for my size, EU 37)
German short rows, dividing the 32 stitches on the back of the work into 11-10-11. No extra knit rounds in between, just slip the worked double stitch on the return.
Knit two rounds
On the heel side, on every 2nd row: k2tog, knit until 2 left, ssk a total of 5 times. There are now 32 stitches on the front part of each sock and 22 stitches on the back.
After 6 cm of stockinette stitch, redistribute the stitches by moving four stitches to the back and increase 2 evenly in the back (after 8 and 10 stitches). There are now 28 stitches both in the front and the back.
Continue stockinette while increasing 4 stitches (two in the front and two in the back) every 7th round a total of 4 times. There are now a total of 72 stitches, i.e. 36 stitches front and 36 back.
Continue stockinette for 2 cm. On the next round, increase 8 stitches evenly distributed (9 stitches in between) to a total of 80 stitches, and start k2 p2 ribbing. When the ribbing is of desired length (for me: when the yarn is about to run out) bind off using a stretchy bind-off.

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