Socks

Yesterday, after mentioning the new sock project that I started even though I should have been working on (insert name of Christmas gift that's not getting knitted very fast here), I got some questions in the comments about knitting a sock from the toe up. I figured that answering these questions is more interesting that me discussing things that cannot be discussed, or the Gifts That Will Not Be Named, if you will. So here goes. A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, (actually it was Texas, but sometimes Texas seems like a different galaxy) I stumbled across a toe up sock pattern here. I had never tried knitting a sock before but these seemed fairly easy and since they were toe up, there was no kitchener stitch (I really don't do kitchener stitch well, or even OK, in fact I stink at kitchener). Plus, since they are little footie socks, once you're past the heel turn, you're pretty much done, so it completely appealed to my short attention span. So I knitted a bunch of these. In fact, I taught myself to do Fair Isle knitting on them.

For those interested, I used Dale of Norway Baby Ull on these. Then I started doing full socks, with actual cuffs. I threw in some ribbing and some knit/purl stitch patterns and I was happy. For a pattern I used a combination of what I had learned with the footies and Wendy's Basic Toe Up Sock pattern. To start the toe I use a provisional cast on and the Easy Toe, discussed in this Knitty article. I've found that with the exception of one pair of socks, if I start the heel turn when the sock comes up the top of my foot to where my ankle bends into my leg, the socks are exactly the right length. The one pair of socks that was the exception was the Loganberry Socks and that yarn (handspun Border Leicester and Mohair) does not have a lot of elasticity, so I had to knit farther than where my ankle meets my foot for the sock to fit correctly. I love knitting toe up socks because for me, they are very intuitive and I don't have to think about them much at this point. I'd like to learn how to knit from the cuff down because there are some really great sock patterns out there that I'm too lazy to reverse, and I think it would be good for me to know how to do this. I can see myself knitting toe up though with handspun since I don't add much in stitch pattern to a handspun yarn anyway. We'll have to see if I can do this first pair of top down socks before I decide if I'm doing any more this direction!