Fall is for socks

I finally got Dan, the socks, and the camera all together at the same time – here are the socks on the man!

They fit perfectly. Also, I tried a new toe shape. It decreases 8x per round, but the increase rounds start gradually and then speed up. So the first decrease is *K2tog K6* and then you knit 6 rounds straight. Then *K2tog K5* followed by 5 rounds straight. The closer you get to the toe, the more quickly the increases come. You end with 8 stitches, which are closed like the top of a hat (no grafting). What do you think?I think the shape is quite nice. No trapezoidal corners!

Dan is very pleased with how the bamboo stitch came out, and so am I.

I have another pair of socks on the needles, too – plain vanilla socks that mostly show up at soccer games and work meetings. This is Trekking XXL that I got at MDSW just last May.These shades of purple make me happy, so I guess they are my socks. They look nice and bright here (and they are), but some stripes are quite dark and they can be difficult to work in less-than-perfect lighting. I worked the same toe on these that I tried for Dan, since I felt I needed to test drive it personally. Here’s the bird’s eye view:

Seems to fit fine.

Have you noticed the surge of interest in knitting plain vanilla socks in self-striping yarn? It’s really true that everything comes and goes and comes back again. Most of the early sock yarns I bought were self-striping or self-patterning. Then I got away from those because I wanted to knit more complicated designs which were obscured by that type of yarn. Now I am happy to knit them again (maybe because my other projects are more complicated?). I think Susan B. Anderson has singlehandedly fuelled the current self-striping/self-patterning sock yarn craze with her #operationsockdrawer posts (she flashed a photo of her drawer once and everyone went nuts). She knits with everything from good old trusty Regia to indie dyers on Etsy.

And speaker of indie dyers on Etsy, have you gotten wind of the Knitmore Girls / Biscotte & Cie scandal? Oh my. It’s a drama in several acts. Suffice it to say that I have NO INTEREST in having to treat my yarn or my socks with citric acid to set the dye. That’s the dyer’s job. Frankly, the whole story has spooked me from indie dyers. Not that I buy willy nilly on Etsy – the indies I get are usually well-established (Miss Babs, for instance). But still.

That’s enough knit-talk for now. I leave you with a photo I took on a walk with Boy 1 last weekend. We are enjoying the last gasp of fall color here. Many leaves have fallen, but a few of the brightest orange blazes remain. I hope we don’t get a windy day soon because that really will be the end of them. They are so lovely while they last. Enjoy some autumn!