Tuesday, November 25, 2008

old navy

finished a pair of socks for my brother who said he wanted "blue"socks; so blue socks it is!

" old navy socks"
regia line steps color #5374


us size 1.5 needles (2.5mm)
gauge: 8.5 sts/inch in sockinette
mods: cast on 72 sts because yarn is thinner and socks are for a guy! knit pattern on leg only; extended ribbing down instep; eye of partridge heel flap. and they match, too!

then, i decided to play with some of the new panda wool superwash that susan sent me. psup (nickname used by cpy) feels and knits the same as its mommy, panda wool. It's still a bit splitty but not extremely so. i only really notice it when i have to pick up stitches i've dropped or frogged. the test will be in the washing. i plan on knitting up a swatch from the left-overs and throwing it in the washing machine. the original pwool seemed to felt if you even looked cross-eyed at it!

my own pattern
socks for my sil
panda superwash "joyful" (color is pretty accurate in first picture)
186 yds/50 gm


needles: us size 1.5 (2.5mm)
gauge: 8.5 sts/inch in stockinette


i hate short row heels; and yes, you do see a short row heel in that sock. i don't like them mainly because they generally don't fit my high instep and because i can never get the two sides of the heel to look the same. nonetheless, you never can tell when knowing how to knit one will come in handy so i will periodically try different ones (which usually get frogged and replaced by a heel flap and gusset). i have learned that working a short heel flap with a short row heel or using 60% of the stitches works. i just have not found a short row heel that i like ... until now. this is a jojo heel with a tutorial here. both sides look pretty much the same. i am getting very small holes but think that those will go away with more practice. and i know you are probably asking when would i need to use a short row heel. well, two situations do come to mind. did you know that short row heels use less yardage than the traditional heel flap and gusset? so this is a handy trick for the times you don't have a whole lot of yarn. short row heels also cause less pooling of handpainted yarns and such. of course, adding the small heel flap will still cause some disruption.

jojo short row heel with small heel flap!

i can live with this one!

3 comments:

Knitting Linguist said...

Both socks look great! I love the colors of the second one in particular :)

Unknown said...

The colors in the second sock are GORGEOUS!!! Well done on the short row heel.

Anonymous said...

Really amazing work..keep going....great work..


Thank you very much...

___________________
Andrew
#1 Satellite Television Service Provider