Wow, I feel like I was working on these for-freaking-ever! But they’re finally done.
- Pattern: Wendy D. Johnson’s Summer 2008 Socks
- Yarn: Patons Stretch Socks (colorway Plum), about 1.5 balls’ worth
- Needles: Addi Turbo US 0, 40″ circular (magic loop technique, one sock at a time)
- Time: Cast on 7/3/08, finished 7/27/08
- Size: 8″ circumference version; to fit shoe size US 9 Ladies
- For those on Ravelry, here’s the project page (login required)
I really love this yarn. It’s comfy, stretchy, soft, pretty… I hope Patons will make it in a wider variety of colors. I definitely want to try the “olive” colorway, too. The pattern was fun to knit — super-easy to memorize (only 3 pattern rows, and two of those are knit and purl!) — and I finally learned a toe-up flap heel that doesn’t require picking up stitches. Makes the heel fit really well, I think.
The one thing I was awfully skeptical about while knitting these was all the biasing and twisting going on. All the SSKs make the pattern move in a spiral around the leg — which ordinarily isn’t so bad, but in this case it made the fabric spiral along with it. During my little photo shoot of about 10 minutes, the socks had already started twisting around my feet. I thought for sure I wouldn’t be able to stand it and that I’d only wear them occasionally (I wasn’t about to rip anything out after spending more than three weeks on them). Well, I wore them to work for the first time on Tuesday, and know what? The twisty stuff didn’t bother me one bit. I’m sure they were twisting all around in my shoes (I could see the heel had slipped almost the whole way around to the side on both feet), but all I felt was nice, comfy, hand-knit socks. (You can bet regular old store-bought socks would have been annoying me all day if they had been twisting around like that! Especially those seams on the top of the toes… why oh why do they make them like that?!)
So, now I have another set of needles empty for the next project… I’m still working on my Lifestyle Socks, 2-at-a-time on magic loop. Plus I still have the second Baby Fern – Rib Anklet to finish (33 Ravelers have already added it to their queues — so excited about that!). And, of course, I still need to do the final steps on super-secret-Mom’s-birthday project. But, of course, I have now contracted startitis and will need to cast on a new pair of socks this weekend, probably Monkey, because I’m dying to try the Fearless Fibers sock yarn I bought several months ago.
