I’ve been making a lot lately for my girls instead of for myself, so my count of finished projects for myself is pretty low this year. I lost a bit of my making mojo this year, thanks to a lot of projects that made me say “hmmm”. The girls have helped me to recover a bit of that, so over the next few posts, we’ll have a look at a few of those stalled projects. Coming back to them with a fresh eye has given me some ideas.
First up, the knee socks.
I’m not sure why knee socks intrigue me so much. They’re a lot (a LOT) of knitting and I seldom wear them once they’re done. All the same, I can’t resist them. It’s inexplicable.
For example, I made these in 2009 and have never worn them. Not even once. I take them out of the drawer and look at them sometimes, though. I do like that they exist.
The current choice of knee socks is Quail, designed by Martin Storey to be knit in Rowan Fine Art. Those are Ravelry links, as the yarn is (naturally) discontinued. I’ve been eyeballing these since I bought the book when it was first released in 2013.
The pattern is in this book for Rowan Fine Art: Fine Art Collection. It should be available for sale individually, but Rowan’s buy links from Ravelry are a trainwreck since they updated their website (and didn’t update the links.)
Here’s Rowan’s pic of the socks from the book. Of course, it’s a lovely photograph as is always the case with Rowan, but one that doesn’t let you see the detail in the socks very well.
It turns out that they have bobbles, which I’m leaving out since I hate bobbles. I hate knitting them and I hate that they look like warts when they’re done. No bobbles for me.
This should mean that I need less yarn and I hope that’s true. The pattern calls for three skeins of Fine Art, which has 400m per skein. That’s a lot of yardage for socks, even for knee socks – usually you need 350 – 400m for socks and double that for knee socks, with lots leftover for knitting for the girls – even with a light fingering like this one. I have two skeins of Fine Art in a plummy colour, so right from my cast-on, I’m playing yarn chicken.
The colourway is called Rowan. (That’s a Ravelry stash link, because I think it’s fun to see pictures of a specific yarn in a whole bunch of knitters’ stashes.)
I’m knitting them in the round on 2.0mm needles. Here’s where I stalled:
The top looks huge, which is always the way with knee socks. What made me go “hmmm” was the pooling. On the cuff, it made a nice little stripe, but once the stitches were added for the cables, it made a big moving pool. I’ve started the decreases and you can see that the width of the pool is decreasing. It’ll spiral down to a narrow stripe again by the ankle. I’d rather have stripes or cables, but not both at the same time.
I made another pair of socks in this yarn, in another colourway, and they did a similar striping, just in short plain socks. Here they are:
I’m not wildly in love with this pooling, but I can live with it since the socks are just in plain rib.
Here’s the shawl I made in this same yarn, which also pooled:
The thing is that I like the pattern of the pooling in the shawl, even with the lace stitch. I think it’s because it falls into a regular stripe that doesn’t vary over the length of the shawl. It’s the changing width of the stripes that I find distracting in the socks.
So, these socks are going to Frog Pond, and the yarn is returning to the stash. I’ll use it on a shawl, I guess, or another project that has the same number of stitches per row.
Maybe one pair of knee socks to admire is enough. 🙂
Mr. Math likes thick socks in the winter – he wears them instead of slippers in the house. I use a Canadian yarn for these socks called 
The second of this pair of socks is currently on my needles. It’s knit in another yarn from the Maritimes: 
This pair of socks are knit in Noro Sock yarn. Although this is a yarn from a big commercial mill, there’s a deliberate wabi-sabi attitude toward self-striping repeats in Noro yarns. Sometimes a color is missing from the sequence. Often the color segments are of different lengths. The repeat is less perfect and more organic, which I like a lot. These socks are knit from alternating balls – 2 rows from ball A, then 2 rows from ball B, then back to ball A for two more rows etc. This is one of my favorite ways to show off self-striping yarns.
Alive & Knitting 