Socked In

Totally. When I woke up this morning the mountains and glacier were completely obscured by clouds. It's been grey and drippy and more or less socked in all day long. So, naturally, I bring you socks:



I love this yarn! These are my first socks knit with Socks That Rock yarn, but certainly they won't be my last. It's a joy to knit with this yarn and on both socks I knit from cast on to toe without finding any flaws or knots. This is my particular pet peeve- having to cut my yarn and rejoin because of yarn imperfections - and a yarn gets high marks from me based on knotfree-ness alone.

The best thing about these socks is what I learned while knitting them.

I've been knitting a long time. I thought I knew a thing or two. I really thought I knew what a pattern meant by "pick up and knit." I thought you always used yarn other than the working yarn to create stitches and that on subsequent rows, you knit those new stitches. Something like this. And then I starting knitting Nancy Bush socks and reading Knitting On The Road. I've seen the light, I'm a new woman. Hallelujah!

Since making this discovery for myself, I've noticed that other knitters already seem to know this bit of wisdom. Not all maybe, but many. I don't know how it is that it's taken me so long to stumble upon it.

It's so simple too. Knitting on the Road shows a couple of variations. I went with "..pick up the front half of the chain stitches and knit through the back loop, the stitches will be tighter and there will be no gaps that may otherwise appear along the sides of the flap." And then I went on to follow further advice for gappy joins between gusset and instep stitches. This woman is a genius and I will never look back. It was the one thing that used to annoy me about knitting socks. I'd get a gorgeous heel going and then invariably I'd have some wonky gap that would bug me until the sock was done and I could work some magic while weaving in the extra ends I'd created by picking up stitches. Never again. There are no wonky gaps. AND there are no extra ends. I only had two ends to weave in per sock. (This alone is worth the price of the book.)



I have to point out though, even Nancy Bush couldn't save me from myself. If you look closely at this photo, you will notice that the gusset decreases in the top sock are twisted. Apparently I had a short circuit while working the first sock and on my "sl1, k1, psso" decrease, I slipped purlwise. I can live with this as no one is going to be scrutinizing my ankles while I'm wearing these socks (or any other time really, those days are long past.)

Oak Ribbed Socks
Yarn: Socks That Rock, in Carbon
Needles: US 1, dpns
Pattern: Oak Ribbed Sock from Knitting Vintage Socks by Nancy Bush
Modifications: I did a standard toe shaping, kitchenered at the end, rather then the round toe for which this pattern called.