Farfalle

This is my current office knitting project – Farfalle Socks: I can’t remember where I ran across this pattern – somewhere in the Ravelry forums.  The poster categorized the pattern as “sleeper hit” or some such equivalent.  It’s really very simple – almost all stockinette with a couple of 2x2 left cable twists thrown in every now and then.  The twists look like the middle of a piece of farfalle.

I was a little skeptical when the pattern asked me to cast on 72 and in fact prepared to rewrite it with a lower number.  But I tried with 72 first anyway.  Lo and behold, all those cable twists, small as they are, really make 72 work on a woman’s medium foot.  The 1x1 ribbing at the top is a little loose, so I might do that differently next time – but the main sock fabric is perfect.  I adjusted the foot so that the bottom needle has 32 stitches (half of 64, my perfect number in stockinette) and the top needle has 36 (half of 72 – since that section still has twists).  Seems to have worked well. The yarn is Dye Dreams (no longer in business, sadly) Dream Sox (75% superwash merino, 25% nylon) that I purchased at the 2010 Indie Artist Celebration at Eleganza Yarns in Frederick, MD (also no longer in business).  The yarn has 4 plies, but they are not very tightly twisted.  I often lose a ply doing the cable twists, but so far I’ve had little trouble getting them back on the needles.  Of course, I’m using my pointiest Knit Picks needles.

In other knitting news, I’m coming to the end of the second orange sock.  With luck, I’ll finish this weekend.  Vodka Gimlet beckons…