The Right Sock

Begun: 1/5/08

Finished: 2/9/08

Pattern: The base is SKS’s Four-Stitch Ribbing Patterns, p. 33, using the Waffle Rib pattern on p. 38. The sole is reverse stockinette again, given the heavy weight of the yarn.

Size intended: Men’s 10.5, Narrow

Needles: Two size 3 circular needles for the ribbing, the heel, and the toe, two size 5 dpns and one size 5 circular for the rest.

Yarn: Crystal Palace Puffin, which is 100% polyester fleece ribbon, in Jet Black

Gauge: 5.5 stitches

Cast on: 48 stitches

Amount of ribbing: 2 inches

Leg length: 7 inches to top of heel

Heel height (including entire flap): 3″

Heel flap length: 2″

Total foot: 10.5″

Heel to toe: 9″

Comments: My first socks for someone other than Joh! Yes, I know socks don’t have gender, so it should be the “Sibling of Grim Socks,” but these were specifically intended for male wear. Perhaps I went to an extreme to make sure they wouldn’t be too garish for that purpose, but I wanted to make sure my friend would at least be willing to try them on!

In fact, from the picture, they look pretty much like the Grim Socks, but if examined closely along the edges, the bumpiness of the crossing lines on the ribs can be seen.

I do like Puffin for heavy-weight socks, and Joh said her Grim Socks fit perfectly, so that was crucial in choosing the pattern. A men’s size 10.5 is close to a women’s size 9, so I wanted something that would work up about the same size. I tried three different cast-ons—originally I wanted to do Stansfield #10, on p. 48, which is a more complicated waffle rib, but that sock looked like it was going to be much too big around. (Now watch: my friend will tell me that the socks are too narrow!)

I finally figured out that when doing a reverse stockinette sole, you must also reverse the Kitchener stitch (that is, make it purl, knit, knit, purl) to make the toe come out correctly. Unfortunately I only figured this out at the end, when I turned the socks inside out to weave in the ends and noticed how much nicer the toe looked from that side. I owe you another pair of socks, my friend, with better toes! Just let me know how this first pair fit!

Begun: 12/24/07

Finished: 1/4/08

Pattern: Sort of a mongrel. The base is SKS’s Class Sock, p. 29, increased to a 48-stitch cast-on. The toe follows The Sock Knitter’s Companion: Step-by-Step Help Sock. The sole is reverse stockinette, which I had to work out for myself.

Size Intended: Women’s size 9

Needles: Two size 3 circular needles for the ribbing, the heel, and the toe, one size 5 circular and three size 5 double-points for the rest (I lost one of my size 5 dpns! ^_^;;;)

Yarn: Crystal Palace Puffin, which is 100% polyester fleece ribbon, in Jet Black

Gauge: 5.5 stitches

Cast on: 48 stitches

Amount of ribbing: 1.5 inches

Leg length: 7 inches to top of heel

Comments: When I first started to take up sock knitting a few months ago and recruited Joh as my Director of Socks, I asked her what kind of socks she wanted: Lacy ones? Multicolored? Texture patterns? Humorous socks? NOT humorous socks? Positively grim socks? She responded that now she wanted grim socks because they sounded funny.

So I set out to make grim socks. As I told Joh, these socks are grim on three counts:

1. They are grim in color.
2. Although in a heavier weight yarn, they are the same design as the socks our father wore to work, black, corporate, unquestionably the grimmest socks I have ever seen.
3. They were knit while watching the latter seasons of Homicide: Life on the Street. Surely there is nothing grimmer than watching Callie Thorne try to carry the dramatic weight of Melissa Leo.

The yarn was chosen because it was a heavy weight yarn that did not contain animal fibers. It’s also machine washable and dryable. The local yarn store owner may speak scathingly of the “wash-and-wear crowd,” but I think a present is hardly a present if it involves major difficulty in upkeep. The yarn feels a little grippy at first, but I soon got used to it. With size 5 needles, it knits up to a nice, dense but soft sock. I wish Crystal Palace would realize from the sold-out status of Jet Black that the yarn is not just for babies and release some real colors, but as of Spring 2008, it’s still going to be just pastels, except for Jet Black and Wild Lime (lime is quite probably my least favorite color in the universe).

Because the yarn was so bulky, I did the sole in reverse stockinette, putting the smooth knit side against the foot and the bumpy purl side out. I decided to do this based on a comment made by the author on p. 50 of SKS, but I had to work out for myself the details of how to accomplish it. For future reference (which I will need on the very next pair of socks, also being knit in Puffin), start purling where it says to knit and knitting when it says to purl on the heel turn, through the entire sole, and through the underside of the toe. When the pattern calls for ssk, purl two stitches together. When the pattern calls for two stitches knit together, purl the first stitch of the two to be decreased, slip the second stitch knitwise, and then passed the slipped stitch over the previous (purled) stitch. To be sure it’s right, check the inside of the sock to see if the stitches lie correctly from the knitted view. Note also that I have more trouble with ladders when the last stitch on the first needle and the first stitch on the second needle are both purled. I redid a large portion of sock to fix one particularly bad point in a ladder. I also think the yarn may have something to do with the ladder trouble. I’ve ordered another size 5 circular, and hopefully that will take care of some of that problem.

By the way, while turning the heel is still a challenge, by far the hardest part of a sock is the gussett. (For non-knitters, the gussett is the part of the sock where the heel is done and you’re narrowing the opening down to the width of the foot.) I did the gussett on the first Grim Sock about five times before I got it acceptable.

I think the toes are still too pointy, although I haven’t any feedback yet from Joh on that point. Maybe it’s just that I have short toes so the toes of my feet look boxy to me, but the sock patterns look to me like they call for too much tapering. Although it means more Kitchener stitch, I think I’ll go with a longer foot and shorter blunter toe from now on. (For those of you who don’t knit, Kitchener stitch—aka grafting, aka weaving—is a stitch done with raw ends of knitting, to make it look like the pieces were one continuous bit of knitting. I think it was invented to make knitters doubly glad that the project is over. It is quite the bear, especially as far as tension goes, but if that’s what it takes to make better toes, I’ll just have to get better with Kitchener stitch.)

Joh has already road-tested these socks, and they seem to be a success. I hope so because the experience is being called upon immediately for the next pair of socks.