Laurabelle’s Blog

As I wrote previously, I've been moving towards wearing hand-knitted socks. For the most part this has been fabulous, but it did uncover a lack in my wardrobe: black shoes.

It's not that I don't own any black shoes; I have at least about five pairs. It's simply that they're all at least moderately formal and therefore too tight to wear with anything but hose. Therefore a shoe-shopping trip to REI was in order.

My requirements were simple: black, comfortable, open on top to show off socks, and a strap to hold my foot in (because I have a narrow heel and my foot will always fall out without a strap). And of course they have to look good to me and on me. Finding shoes to meet these criteria wasn't a problem; I settled on Ahnu Kicks as the most comfortable.

Few shoe-shopping trips are without their casualties. Mine was a lovely green-and-brown pair of Teva Westwaters that the assistant brought out by mistake; I had asked for the black but didn't complain because in fact the "pesto" colorway looks much better to me than black-and-gray. These are even more open than the Kicks and will be especially nice for summer wear.

The socks featured in the photos are from a Knitty pattern called Hedera. I finished them Tuesday evening; the yarn is Pagewood Farm Hand Dyed Sock Yarn and just lovely. (I fell in love with the color when I saw it in another Raveler's stash and traded her for it.) I like the pattern, but if I were to knit it again, I would make a few changes:

• The tubular cast-on looks slightly funny with the “twisted rib” (knit stitches are through the back loop to twist them). I would still use a tubular cast-on but would try modifying it to knit through the back loop like the ensuing rib.
• The heels are a bit long (48 rows, 24 st picked up on each side). 32 or 36 rows would be more to my liking.
• The given stitch counts are a little wrong after the gusset (the number of stitches remaining on the top of the sock is 29, not 27), so if you follow the instructions you end up with 58 or 62 stitches (for the small and large sizes, respectively) instead of 56 or 60 like you're supposed to. One just needs an extra gusset decrease row to get back to the right total stitch count.

I am up in the middle of the night, blogging, because I went to sleep at about 8pm, woke up when Jeff came to bed at about 11:30, and wasn't able to get back to sleep. Now I feel a bit like Christmas Eve, in that I want to wear my new shoes but have to wait until morning and can't sleep for anticipation...

For most of my life I've worn the same kind of socks, the white cotton sport socks one picks up in a pack of twelve at Target, Wal-Mart, or the like. Jeff would call them quantity one (1) socks; they fulfill the purpose but could stand some improvement.

In college I tried to change this by buying nicer-looking socks. While I did succeed in purchasing about five pairs of attractively-patterned socks, these are now aging. When I pulled them out of the drawer recently, the elastic gave an unmistakable creak. So in early December I resolved to knit myself some nice socks. This also has the advantage that I can knit them out of wool, my preferred sock fiber. I've never been able to find commercial dress socks in wool.

I have a few pairs of hand-knitted socks already. My mother knitted me a couple of pairs (one multicolored and one plain brown), and I made myself a bright red pair shortly after I started knitting, out of inherited stash. For whatever reason, I didn't wear them much.

I knitted myself two pairs of socks after Christmas. The first pair is Twisted Tulip Socks from the Spring 2008 Interweave Knits. Those were fun to knit. The yarn is Blue Moon Fiber Arts Socks that Rock Mediumweight. I love the springiness of the yarn, though I think I will switch to Socks that Rock Lightweight for future projects. Mediumweight is a bit heavy for me.

The yarn for the other pair was a Christmas present from my mother: Regia Color 4-ply (wool/nylon). The pattern is Jaywalker (free on Ravelry), and as advertised, it's a snug fit. The socks are nice and warm (a good thing in our chilly apartment).

I've seen other knitters resolve to knit a pair of socks each month. I think I'll give that a try — starting with March. February is a lost cause.

I knitted a pair of socks.

Then I cataloged them.

100 1   Melton, Laura, ‡d 1979-
245 1 0 [Cabled socks].
260     ‡c [2005].
300     1 pair socks : ‡b wool, brown : ‡c 54 cm. long.
500     Title supplied by cataloger.
500     Pattern: Reynolds Yarns no. 372.

Non-librarians may wish to stop reading here; it’s going to get technical. Moreover, librarians who don’t give a rat’s behind about the nits of cataloging should probably skip it too, because I’m going to pick some.