This year has been my year of socks. I am currently knitting my 45th pair for the year if I counted right.
When I was young, I learned to knit from my mother and aunts and went hardly anywhere without some knitting on the needles - including knitting under the desk in school.
After moving to California and getting busy with raising kids, I pretty much stopped knitting but held on to some of the yarns I still had and that somehow made it over the big pond with me.
Fast forward many, many years (no, I am not going to tell you how many 😉) I found my love for knitting again. I started with some old sock yarn I had laying around and made some socks for my grandkids.
Then I discovered Ravelry and a whole new world of knitting and fiber arts I had no idea had come into existence while I was living in a world without needles and string.
Fast forward to February when I found out about Sock Madness - a knitting competition held on Ravelry. This year, over 2000 knitters from all over the world participated and I knit socks like I never did before. So much fun!
But the socks I am going to tell you about today are rather simple patterns I made for my husband.
The red-orange-yellow stripy ones you see in the photo above are the first pair I made for him. I have to admit that after so many years of no knitting, I had to remind myself how socks are constructed. Also, I wasn't sure if I had enough yarn and, thanks to the internet, I learned about the afterthought heel.
I used it with the thought that I could use a different yarn if I ran out. As it turns out, it is not my favorite construction.
The next project was the dark blue, followed by the grey, blue, and green striped pair.
My husband wears US size 12 shoes and he likes the legs of his socks very long. Knitting one pair for him is like making two pairs for me. Since he has tons of storebought socks, I decided to not knit for him anymore.
He currently works a 12-hour drive away from home. The next time we got together after I made my "no more knitting huge socks" decision, he announced that from here on out he only wants to wear socks I made for him.
Now, I make sure I have a new pair ready whenever we get together.
Right now, I am with him in Arizona at his workplace on the Navajo Nation. There is not much for me to do here besides knitting - a fact that got me back into this beautiful art form in the first place.
Let me show you what I have done in the last 12 days I have been here.
I used Cloudborn Merino Sock Yarn for the cuffs, heels, and toes. The rest of the sock is in Schachmayer Regia Festival colors. Both yarns are superwashed and have nylon in it - something I am trying to avoid in the future. But that is a tale for another day.
I cast on 80 stitches for the cuff on 2.5 mm needles. Reduced to 72 stitches for the leg, and to 68 after all guesset decreases were done.
The heel is a heel flap with short row shaping.
To make the heel stronger, I slipped every other stitch with the yarn in front.
Next, I made this pair.
We picked up the yarn at a local Trading post. It is a one-ply 85% wool and 15 % mohair most people here use for weaving. The yarn is from the Brown Sheep Company.
It really is not the best wool for socks and needs to be hand-washed. But my husband wanted a pair and they can always be the house socks or, when it gets colder (it is already below freezing every night, but it will get way colder pretty soon), he can wear them to bed.
If he forgets that they need to be treated very carefully and throws them in the washing machine, we will have nice felted booties to give to one of the grandkids.
The colorwork is all achieved with slip stitches and is my design. I kept pretty good notes on Ravelry if you feel like knitting socks like this yourself.
This is the next pair I finished. A simple toe-up construction with a Fleegle heel. The yarn is also a Cloudborn sock yarn I bought when it was deeply discounted since the brand is discontinued.
I have another sock almost finished I will show you next time. Not too bad of an accomplishment in a 12-day visit.
This article is also published on Steem and on the Sustainable Living Podcast website