Pedicure socks, Take Two

I'm going to take another whack at pedicure socks, this time with wool that's more to my liking.

 This is a stranded pattern from "Sensational Knitted Socks" by Charlene Schurch. It's worked in 3 colors in the book but I'm only using 2. This is Buckingham by Bristol Yarn Gallery in "natural" and "lite lime", which are nice springy colors. It's 80% baby alpaca and 20% silk so it's wonderfully soft and warm. It's not nearly sturdy enough to be used for socks that will be worn with shoes but it's perfect for socks to wear around the house with slippers. I cast on 80 stitches with 2.5s, decreased by 8 in the first 40 rows of the pattern and then switched to 2.0s. Stranded knitting has very little give and I have "shapely thighs" so I have to do some shaping if I want them to fit.

No One Knows My Toes

When it comes to shaping the toe, most sock patterns instruct the knitter to do matched decreases on every other row until about a third of the stitches remain and then to graft the remaining stitches. This produces a wedge shaped toe. My toes aren't wedge shaped and if I knit socks that are snug, which is how I like them, the toes are uncomfortable. My toes are sort of rounded and I want the toe of my socks to be rounded too so here's how I usually shape my toes.

For the first third of toe decreases, I decrease on every other row. For the second third of toe decreases, I decrease on every row and then I graft the remaining stitches together. The produces a nice round toe. Unfortunately, it also produces dog ears when you graft the last third of stitches. Ideally you should also do paired decreases on the grafted row since you've be doing paired decreases on the previous rows. Here's one way to do that.

You're doing a pair of decreases on the sole and another pair on the top. Of each of the pairs, one will be a K2TOG and one will be a SSK. You can do the K2TOG by grafting the two stitches as one but you need to shuffle the two stitches that you're going to SSK before you start. You do this to the second and third stitch on the needle closest to you and the second and third to last stitches on the needle farthest from you. Put the first, second and third stitches each on their own holder, then put the third stitch in back, put the second stitch back on the needle, then the third and then the first. It's just like a cable cross and looks like this.

Then you graft the stitches together, treating the second and third stitches as one and the second and third to last as one. Like this:

The end result looks like this from the front:

And this from the back:

And this from the top:

So the toe is rounded and comfortable and has no dog ears.

A Look Back At 2009

I was look at my projects on Ravelry and realized that I only completed 5 projects in 2009.

Kai Mei socks

Eriskay

 

Liidia's Gloves

My Little Blue Sweater (in fuschia, obviously)

 

Rainbow Hat and Mittens

How depressing. I took 3 or 4 months off last summer because my shoulder hurt and I thought knitting might be aggravating it but even when you consider that and the fact the Eriskay took the better part of 4 months to knit, it's not much to show for a year. Here's to hoping that 2010 will be more productive.

Let's Just Stick With Things We Like

I need a "quick score" after the unsuccessful pedicure socks so I decided to go with a pair of cabled socks in a near solid colorway; two things I'm pretty much guaranteed to like.

This the "January Blues" colorway in the fingering weight superwash wool/nylon blend from Piece of Vermont. This is 72 stitches cast on with 2.25 mm needles. The pattern repeats over 8 stitches. The cables really pop when the fabric is stretched. The colorway is a dark denim-y blue with a little purple. I'm down to the heel flap on the first sock. What's not to love?

Now I Remember Why I Don't Like Knitting Gloves

Because knitting the fingers is a pain in the neck. It's fiddly and awkward, which makes it difficult to maintain an even, tight gauge so you almost always wind up with gaps and holes. Maybe these would look better with the ends woven in and having been blocked but I doubt it.

I also remember why I don't like colorways with multiple colors. I don't like the way they look even when they don't pool. I like all of these colors individually and two or three of them would probably work well together, assuming they're complimentary but all of them together are too much. It might work in a stranded pattern with a neutral to tone it all down but on its own, it's just too much. I'm not wild about the spiraling stripes. They obscure the pattern and look rather coarse.

It hasn't been a total waste of time. I figured out how to calculate the stitch counts for the toes and I'll probably finish the second one at some point but for now I think I'll put these aside and start over with yarn that I actually like.

The Problem with Wood or Bamboo DPNs

Wood and Bamboo DPNs are cheap and readily available, which is a good thing because they don't last long. My cats like to chew on them. They (the cats) wait until you have to answer the phone or until the water for your tea boils and then they do this:

Those are just the needles from the past two days. Even if you're really disciplined and always put your knitting away so your cats can't get at it, eventually they (the needles) will look like this:

The steel needle is nice and straight. The wood needles, not so much. She (the worst offender of the needle chewing cats) looks like this:

Isn't she adorable? Good thing. If she weren't so cute, I'd have drop kicked her furry little but into oblivion long ago. Anyway, I prefer steel needles but use wood or bamboo for socks because steel is too slippery. However, someone pointed out in a discussion on Ravelry that you can take the gloss off of steel needles with a very fine grit emery paper. I'm more than willing to invest in steel DPNs just for sock knitting. I don't want to rough up the DPNs that I use for sweaters but it's worth it to order steel needles just for socks if it means never having to put aside a project until I can get to the LYS to buy more wood needles that will only be sacrificed to Fraulein Feline.

Fife and the Stitch-O-Meter

After a false start, Fife is finally rolling along. This pattern is from "Fisherman's Sweaters" by Alice Starmore with each of the diamond panels modified to be 8 stitches wider, adding 48 stitches overall, which should block out to a finished underarm measurement of 42-43". This is the same yarn that I used for Cape Cod so I used that sweater to determine gauge.

The pattern calls for the yarn to be cast on doubled. I did this originally, and completed the ribbing before deciding that I really didn't like it. I frogged it and started again with a long tail cast on. The ribbing is done on 2.25 needles with 308 stitches cast on. Row gauge is 11 rows per inch so 2 1/2" of ribbing is 28 rows, which means I had to rip out 8932 stitches if you count the cast on as a row, which got me wondering how many stitches there would be in the entire sweater so I've decided to keep track.

cast on 308 stitches + 28 rows: 8932
increase row: 336
40 rows of 336 stitches: 13440
total stitch count to date: 22708