Monkey Socks!
Yay! I finally finished another pair of socks! Patterned socks seem to take me forever. I can blaze through generic ones in no time, but make me follow a pattern and I knit like a snail. This wasn't even a difficult pattern! Quite straightforward and enjoyable, it just makes me pokey for some reason.
Anyway! These are Monkey from Knitty. The pattern is written top down, so of course I had to screw with it and make it toe-up. The first thing I tried was just flipping the little chart upside down. That didn't work. I'm sure there's a way to make something that looks the same as the top-down version, but I didn't really want to work at it that hard. So the pattern on my socks is upside down.
I usually use a short-row heel, but in this case I thought the Widdershins heel (also from knitty) would work better. Short-row heels are my favorite, but at the moment the Widdershins heel is running a very close second. I've never had an issue with having to pick up extra stitches or weird holes, it's a very nice heel! And I think I finally have the math of it down so it should be pretty easy to use it whenever I want from now on.
So, starting at the toe... the pattern is 16 stitches wide, so two repeats across the top of the foot and then stockinette on the bottom. I did 3 full pattern repeats going up the foot, plus 6 rows, then started the gusset for the heel. At that point it's just a matter of keeping track of both which row of the heel you're on and which row of the pattern. The pattern page I printed out has little hash marks all over it! But it worked! Once the heel was finished I brought the pattern all the way around the leg. If I were to do this again I would send the pattern down the heel flap. I wasn't sure of my math and didn't want to have to frog back so I did a plain stockinette heel. But I'm pretty confident at this point that I have a handle on how the heel works so I should be able to do that in any future socks!
The pattern called for 6 repeats up the leg and I did that followed by 10 rows of 1x1 twisted rib and an EZ sewn bind-off. At any rate, the leg goes up higher than I usually have my socks go and the top repeat or so are a tad tight, not enough that it's going to bug me wearing them, but enough that it kind of distorts the pattern. I'm thinking either going up a needle size for that last repeat or else adding a couple stitches would fix that.
I used Lorna's Laces and loved it. It's so soft and sproingy. I had used Lorna's before (for my very first pair of socks) but I think because I had zero sock knitting experience at that point I didn't really appreciate the yarn. Now I know that I love it. And her colors are so beautiful!
And finally... heel close up!
The Stats...
Needles: Size 0
Yarn: Lorna's Laces in Purple Club
Pattern: Monkey from Knitty, toe-up, Widdershins heel.
Sizing: 14/needle for the toe, up to 32/needle, 5" until heel (Widdershins)
SPI: 8 (in stockinette)
Started: 2-12-2007
Finished: 3-17-2007