Wednesday, May 14, 2014

Sometimes you just gotta knit that stitch you don't love

Affection alert: I am smitten with the new ankle socks.


Which is a pain, because as you may recall, I do not love knitting ribbing along the whole length of a sock, even if they're as short as these ones.

I especially do not love knitting ribbing where the knit goes through the back loop.  But these socks look great, and I am willing to go through the pain of endless ribbing if it means getting this texture.


It's hard to believe after the endless weeks of cold weather we had well on into what was supposed to be spring, but the weather is warm again this week.  Really warm, and the stripey socks I worked so hard to knit for my holiday are now emphatically out of season.  These ones are perfect and I'm glad to have them.


The colours are so summery, even the grey if you define 'summery' as anything that will match a new linen tank top.


I saw a girl on the subway the other day wearing bright running shoes with cotton ankle socks and I thought maybe I should just do the same - go storebought and not push the sock stitching, at least for wearing with trainers - but these wool ones are just so much more comfortable for long walks.  I mean: if it's not hot enough for sandals to be the only possible choice, it's just fine for wool... as long as they don't cover your leg up to the calf, of course.


It's almost like a plaid, the way the shadow of the ribbing works against the horizontal stripes.  And that's the upside of knitting through the back loop: the stitch stands higher and narrower.  Trimmer.


Now that my spring holiday is over and things are settling down here (except for planning out a renovation while finishing a first draft of my book - YIKES) I'm pretty sure I can go back to posting five times a week at Hugs instead of three times and tweeting twice.  I'm way too chatty to be restricting myself to 140 characters.  I've got another silly little short story for tomorrow and then next week I'll be back to posting here every weekday, and tweeting when I think of something cute.

Try to fit in some knitting today and I'll see you back here on Friday!

4 comments:

Laurinda said...

Hooray for Hugs, & great fibery photos, coming back every day!!

Mary Keenan said...

Aw, thanks Laurinda :^)

Anonymous said...

I never was an ankle sock lover but seeing your socks-well, I've changed my mind. They are beautiful-even with all that darn ribbing. I noticed the heel looks different. Do you have a pattern or a link? Jan

Mary Keenan said...

Jan, does the heel really look different? I remember spending hours working it out but I remember the worst being the math for the turn... though now that I think of it, I did make it just stocking stitch instead of that thicker slipped stitch many socks have. Anyway what I'm using here is my standard base one - if you were using my PuddleJumper sock pattern and replaced the fancy stitch with plain knitting, that's my base.

For the ankle socks, I cast on and knit 18 rounds of K1tbl, P1 ribbing, then go straight into the heel flap. For the top of the foot, I use plain knit stitch for first and last four sts but maintain the ribbing for the rest until one round before I start the toe. I knit that last round straight through. Hope that helps!