socks that tell time

At the risk of sounding like a Dr. Seuss book, look at my socks! They have clocks!

The description of this pattern says that the design features "clocks," and as a result of my googling I'm going to conclude that a clock is a vertical pattern on the side of a sock. And after knitting this pattern I would like to add that I am now a fan of clocks on socks. They have such a classic look, with just enough interest!

I fell in love with this pattern when I saw it come up (at the same time as my Brocade Socks) in Elinor's sock contest last year. Then you may recall that in my last entry I had just acquired some MacKintosh Yarns Iona Sport Weight at the Midwest Fiber & Folk Art Festival a few weeks back. I had to cast on something in that yarn IMMEDIATELY, and the Solstice Stockings were still calling my name, a year later.

You've probably noticed by now that my socks ended up having one orange toe. Well if I hadn't been so eager to get my fingers all over that squooshy merino-cashmere-nylon I would have noticed that I was casting on for a pattern that called for at least 350 yards of sport weight yarn when I only had 250. Oops. When I ran out of yarn, the ever-resourceful Minty suggested cutting off the cuffs (they were knit as rings and then I picked up the stitches for the rest of the sock from the side of that work - suffice it to say cutting would have been required to remove them at that point), finishing the toe, and then adding as much ribbing as I could to the top of each sock. This is an excellent suggestion, except for a couple of problems: 1. I really like those sideways garter stitch cuffs, and 2. that's a lot of effort for the toe of a sock that will be concealed in shoes. So I took the quick and dirty way out and grabbed another sport weight sock yarn that I had hanging around (Brooklyn Handspun Soft Spun Plus - love this stuff) and finished it off. Allison, an obscenely prolific sock knitter, told me that she calls these "mullet socks" - business up top, party down below. That makes me love them even more.

One last thing about knitting these socks: while the pattern does specify gauge, and includes three different sizes, it does not give measurements for those sizes - it just calls them women's small, medium, and large. Picking a size required some guess-work. I would have expected that since my feet are on the large size (both in terms of circumference and length) that I would be a large. However, if you look down into the pattern instructions, the large size is 64 stitches around on US2 needles. Given that I normally knit and wear 60 stitch socks made on US1s I ended up knitting the small size. So what I'm saying here is that measurements for the sizes would have been helpful.

So now what am I up to? I just got some yarn for a new design that I'm swatching for, perused this book that I just checked out from the library (knee highs! stranded! I love the looks of this), and I did a bit of stitching on my Daisy Chain Sampler today. Then it got too hot to touch wool, sadly. I think after I get back from this evening's going away dinner with friends, you'll be able to find me in front of the fan, cocktail in hand.