socks!

Yes, it's 90+ degrees outside most days, and I'm knitting socks indoors with that lovely invention called air conditioning running in the background.

However, knitting socks in summer is not as odd as it sounds, really:

• Socks are small, so I don't have a lot of knitted fabric in my lap like I would if I were knitting a blanket or a sweater - two projects I've put on hold due to the heat of the season.

• They're portable projects, so I don't have to have a ton of yarn with me, but if I'm going to be stuck in the doctor's office waiting room an hour past my so-called appointment time, I have something to do to improve the inevitable blood pressure reading before the half-hour finally-in-the-exam-room wait that precedes the seven-minute visit with the actual doctor.

• Socks knit up fairly quickly, despite the small needles and thin yarn. It's truly amazing how many rows you can churn out in a doctor's office waiting room.

• I can practice new knitting techniques on the small space of a sock before I attempt them on something larger, thereby eliminating most of the strange looks my cats give me due to the swearing at the inanimate object in my hands whose real task is supposed to be keeping me calm and happy and feeling all productive-little-house-on-the-prairie-pioneer-woman-despite-living-in-the-suburbs-like.

• Ripping back to fix a mistake or to start over isn't as traumatic or frustrating on a smaller scale.

• I'm only dealing with about 64 or so stitches on the needles in an average pair of adult-size socks, and even fewer for kid-size socks.

• I only need one skein of about 400-ish yards of fingering-weight yarn for a pair of socks (compared to seven to twelve or more skeins for a sweater or a cardigan or a blanket). This is great for the budget of a girl who went to Paris and bought a cello in the space of about a month recently.

• There's no lack of sock yarn or sock patterns in the knitting world. Seriously. I mean, jeez.

• Hand-knit socks can be custom fit for foot length, width, heel, arch, extra-pointy toes, etc., which makes them preferable to store-bought socks.

• They can be practical and interesting looking, or dare I say "pretty," all in one.

• I can get a little wild with sock design and color since, especially in winter, they'll be in shoes and under pant legs, but only I will know my crazy socks secret, which will remind me that color will indeed come back in the spring rather than just being one of those wacky concepts that I sometimes hallucinate about.

For all that, though, I've only recently come around to knitting socks as a routine project. I attempted to make a pair several years ago, and things went so very terribly wrong (poor instructions, too complicated a pattern, wrong yarn, wrong size, unwieldy double-pointed needles (DPNs) creating ladders, holes in the gussets, I could go on...). I assumed I was not meant to be a sock knitter.

Then a whole slew of sock knitting books were published, and they were more interesting and had far better instructions and visuals than what I'd been using, which made the process look more do-able. I also learned magic loop technique (knitting small circumferences with one long circular needle), which means I don't have to knit socks on DPNs. And then there are all the YouTube videos - instead of trying to figure out something from text and pictures, I can see the technique in action. Knit Picks has a series of sock-knitting videos that are really good - clear instructions and demonstrations, and Kelley Petkun talking with her hands is hilarious.

I wanted to try knitting a pair toe-up since I like the idea of trying it on as I go to make sure it fits properly as well as eliminating the risk of running out of yarn before the foot is finished, not to mention knitting the leg portion until I do run out of yarn, so no leftover bits that I can't do anything with.

I got Wendy Johnson's Socks from the Toe Up book and actually squealed when I saw the gusset heel sock pattern because you don't have to pick up stitches in this pattern - just increases and short rows with no wrapped stitches for the heel. Love that! I also learned Judy's Magic Cast-on, which creates a seamless toe.

So using the gusset heel pattern, I started a pair of toe-up socks. However, I didn't want to do just stockinette stitch for the majority of the sock, so I went looking for a stitch pattern that would be easy to memorize and would give the top and the leg of the sock some texture and interest. I found Hermione's Everyday Sock pattern (yes, that Hermione), which is actually a cuff-down pattern, but looks just as good knit toe-up.

Combining the two patterns resulted in these:


And they don't look half-bad with shoes:


Knit with One Sheep Hill Superwash Merino fingering weight yarn in the Fading Roses colorway. I used Knit Picks Harmony wood 40" fixed circular needles size 2 for these. Great needles! Nice point, smooth wood-to-cord join, no kinks in cord when folded for magic loop.

I've got a tidy stash of fingering weight yarn that I use to make lightweight scarves, and it now can also be used for socks. When I look at sock patterns now, I'm just looking at the stitch pattern on the top and leg of the sock, as I can adapt it to my beloved gusset heel pattern. Oh, the possibilities!

Using the magic loop method on one circular needle or using two circular needles with toe-up socks also offers one other advantage - knitting two socks at the same time:


The same number of rows, the same height on the leg when they're worn, no having to keep notes on number of rows or changes made on the fly, and NO second sock syndrome!

This is my only concession to efficient knitting. I don't knit continental style. I don't knit backwards so as to avoid having to purl stitches. I don't do cable stitch patterns without a cable needle. In other words, I don't knit to be efficient. I knit, as the amusing T-shirt slogan proclaims, so I don't kill people.

This yarn is also from One Sheep Hill - a merino and nylon blend fingering weight in the Juniper colorway. The pattern is Gridiron by Anne Hanson (I unashamedly visit her blog regularly for the knitting and yarn pr0n, and maybe one day when I have more knitting confidence, I'll attempt one of her shawls. I do have two skeins of some deep dark green fingering weight yarn from Fearless Fibers...)