my year in socks

my year in socks - July

The year is catching up with me fast and I only just finished the July socks last week. Normally, I like to be a bit ahead of time because it takes a while to write the pattern down.
I wanted the July sock to be light and airy and chose an intricate lace pattern with four repeats per round to begin with. After nearly finishing the first sock I gave into the temptation to frog it again because I didn't like the lace pattern in the configuration I had worked it....

After a week or so of mulling this over I settled on a stitch pattern I found in my trusted Stitch Library by Claire Crompton. I have not used this pattern before because it deviates from my comfort zone of eyelet/lace knitting in that the pattern is knitted on the right and wrong side of the work, which I don't like because it might involve purling two stitches together. Yes, I know, a pathetic explanation but there you go.

However, socks are knit in the round and as such there is no wrong side. Well, there is an inside but all is knitted on the right side. The stitch pattern is knitted for a flat piece of work and I needed to read every second row from back to front, exchanging purl stitches for knit stitches. But fear not, I did write it all down to be knitted in the round!

Once I was happy, the socks knitted up pretty fast. I finished the socks during our holidays in Cornwall, where I spent quite some time sitting on my lovely spotty new merino wool blanket, or in the grass, with a glass of wine or a cup of coffee (depending on the time of day). What a very civilised way to spend time!

I have plenty of knitted socks and I knitted this pair for Annie who has slightly smaller feet than I, as well as a more slender ankle. She is a UK size 5 and this is the size I aimed for. It is all trial and error really and the length of the foot can be adapted to whatever length your foot is by knitting more or less pattern repeats. The width can also be adapted quite easily, either by changing needle size (for small adjustments) or by adding or removing stitches from the 10 stitch pattern repeat.

Annie took great pleasure modelling the socks for me. Our campsite neighbours were rather puzzled by our modelling session but since they didn't ask, we didn't explain.