Boy grows, needs socks

Here’s the latest pair of socks for Boy 1, who is growing out of socks a bit faster than I can knit them. His foot is almost as big as mine now, so maybe I should just open my sock drawer to him? For the very first time, I have cast on 64 stiches on 2.0mm needles with fingering weight yarn for him. That’s what I use for women’s socks in my family. A couple of things about this pair. First, I performed the promised experiment with cast on. Can you see a difference above? The sock on the left is my usual long tail CO, and the sock on the right uses the alternate cable CO (see Woolly Wormhead’s excellent instructions for this technique). I think the alternate cable CO is a lot more attractive. It seems to be stretchy enough. Time will tell if it’s too stretchy. I had to work the first row flat and join later… here you can see the little split before I joined it up:I will report back on how that wears.

The second thing to note is the slight bit of patterning just under the 1x1 cuff ribbing. Initially I planned to work this sock in a waffle-like pattern, but I felt it just wasn’t coming through in the yarn so I switched to 3x1 rib. After working that for a couple inches, I showed the sock to Boy 1 to get his feedback. He preferred the smooth ribbing but also didn’t want me to rip back the 3 repeats of waffle at the top. So I repeated that on the second sock. I chose the eye-of-partridge heel, since it lays so nice and flat and is also extra sturdy. And I did the graduated toe decrease again. It seems to be my go-to toe right now.

After a week of ridiculously low temperatures, we gave up on photographing outside and made do in the house. He wants his socks, and he doesn’t get them until after the photo shoot!

That’s another pair for #operationsockdrawer. I have another pair on the needles that is working up very quickly. Next up is seaming the Stonington cardigan and knitting the button band – I finished and blocked the sleeves yesterday. And my next post will be about something totally different. Something that lets you work at warp speed. You know what I mean.