Really, is there any better way to start the day than to wake up and see that a pattern you dreamed up, knit up, wrote up, and poured hours and hours of time, blood, sweat, tears, etc into has won a sock contest? I think that pretty much takes the cake. When Elinor announced her sock contest I thought, “great! an opportunity for me to make this chart I’ve been fantasizing about into something real!” (Yes, I fantasize about charts.) Like most things I do, if I hadn’t had a deadline it never would’ve gotten done, and because of that I’m eternally grateful to Elinor for organizing this whole competition, all while picking up and moving her life, kids, and dogs a few hundred miles.

In order to celebrate (besides taking these pictures of the smaller size Brocade on a foot smaller than my own) I added about a bazillion new sock patterns to my ravelry queue. You can check out all the entries in the contest here and queue up your own faves! First up for me are the Burning Stripes – that heel is clever as all get out, and what a great way to work with the long stretches of color of the zauberballs. (I never get tired of that word.) I’m also looking forward to Circuitry, where I’ll learn about mosaic colorwork, and Oh Jamie, My Jamie, where I’ll get to knit stags and a fabulous strawberry toe. (Can you tell I’m really into colorwork lately?) And finally, I’m really drawn to the vintage aesthetic of the Solstice Stockings. Which contest patterns caught your eye? It’s a fabulous collection, and whatever your knitting proclivities, I’m sure there’s something in there for each of us, and I’m so flattered by the recognition for Brocade.

Ahem, and if you haven’t been there already and would like to go, here is the Brocade pattern on ravelry, where it is available for purchase/download.

Just in the nick of time for Elinor’s deadline, I bring you the Brocade Socks! This is my second self-published knitting design, and I’m very, very excited about it. It is available for purchase ($5!) through ravelry (and also faving and queuing).

Here’s the run-down:

The chart for the Brocade Socks was loosely inspired by a pattern called Elbistan Stitch, from Betsy Harrel’s 1981 Anatolian Knitting Designs: Sivas Stocking Patterns Collected in an Istanbul Shantytown. In addition to the distinctive colorwork, the socks feature a cuff in corrugated ribbing and a sturdy heel flap worked with the yarn held double stranded.

Fair isle socks are less stretchy than non-stranded socks, and as such they should be made as close to the actual size of the wearer’s foot as possible. The pattern includes directions for two sizes (achieved by adjusting gauge and weight of yarn) with notes on customization.

Skills:
twisted German cast-on, knitting stranded colorwork in the round from a chart, basic sock techniques, picking up stitches, grafting

Finished Sizes:
S/M (M/L)
cuff and leg circumference: 8.5”(9”)
foot circumference: 7.5”(8”)
foot length: 8”(8.5”)
shown in size S/M, pink/brown; M/L, cream/orange

Yarn:
S/M version in pink/brown:
MC: 1 skein North Loop Yarn Silky Merino Sock Yarn in Cotton Candy
CC: 1 skein North Loop Yarn Merino Sock Yarn in Brown Black (This line has been discontinued another color of the Silky Merino Sock would be equally suitable for this pattern.)

M/L version in cream/orange:
MC: 1 skein Koigu Premium Merino (KPM) in 0000
CC: 1 skein Brooklyn Handspun Soft Spun Plus in Lil Pumpkin

a note on yarn choice: For the M/L socks, use heavier sock yarns that are almost sport weight. For the S/M socks, use more lightweight sock yarns.

Needles:
S/M: US 2 (2.75 mm) circular needle, 32” long or 1 set US 2 (2.75 mm) DPNs

M/L: US 3 (3.25 mm) circular needle, 32” long or 1 set US 3 (3.25 mm) DPNs

Notions:
tapestry needle, 1 stitch marker

Gauge:
S/M (M/L)
7.5sts/8.5rnds (7sts/8rnds) per inch in chart A pattern in the round

Notes:
This pattern is written for a knitter who is already familiar with sock techniques and stranded colorwork.

In both samples I held the CC as the dominant yarn throughout. For most knitters who work stranded colorwork holding one color in each hand, the dominant color will be the one held in the left hand such that the floats run underneath those of the MC.

I prefer to knit socks on a single circular needle using the magic loop technique and although you may use your favorite technique for working in the round the pattern is written with the magic loop in mind and thus may not be specifically tailored to the use of double pointed needles.

The different sizes are made by slight changes in weight of yarn and gauge, and thus the same numbers and charts are used for both sizes.

In order to follow the pattern exactly as written and make socks that are the correct length you must match both stitch and row gauge. If you cannot get both stitch and row gauge with the same size needles you may match stitch gauge, as the charts are easier to adjust for length/height than they are for width/circumference. Tips for customization are included with the pattern.

Oh what a week I’m having. There are two crafty deadlines, school work that has stepped up a notch or 15 recently, and then I was called in for a full day of jury duty yesterday. Despite the fact that waiting in the jury room all morning was really, really boring and that I’m now going to be playing catch-up all week, the experience was actually kind of interesting in the end. I know, I’m totally batshit crazy.

But in the meantime, I’m really psyched to be able to share a design preview with you all and talk about process. When Elinor announced the Socks Revived Design Contest a few weeks ago, it seemed like a great opportunity to work up a chart I’d been toying with and make it into an actual knitted object. The chart began as a reworking of a particular design in this book, which I recently discovered we have in our university library.

I modified the chart to make it fit my gauge and stitch count for a pair of fair isle socks, cast on and went with it. My first attempt looked pretty great from the front:

so you’ll just have to take my word for it when I say that the back of this sock is a disaster. I tried to break up a large chart of overlapping repeats by putting a bunch of vertical stripes down the back of the leg. While this is a nice way to break up the visual “jump” that you encounter with colorwork in the round, and offers an easy way to adjust size, it looked crappy and it was an awkward width when it came time for a heel flap. Rrrrrrip!

I futzed with the chart more, and by this time it had been so futzed with that it can be described as being loosely inspired by what I originally saw in the Anatolian Knitting Designs book, made it fit my stitch count, and after trying 900 different and ridiculously complicated heels, I decided what I like best, and what fits my foot best, is a good, sturdy heel flap with gussets:

This will be the heel in the final pattern. I love it because it’s worked with the background color held double-stranded so the fabric is a pretty close match to the feel of the rest of the sock. And I have heels of steel, apparently, and will felt and wear through almost anything, so I’ll take all the extra sturdiness I can get.

The problem with the sock you see in that picture, however, is that the toe is heinous:

It pained me so to even take that picture, and then to post it on the internet?! I assure you I ripped that sucker out long ago. That ugly, square, floppy, weirdly bendy toe is long gone. I was trying to continue the lines from the chart and ended up with some really long floats in which my toes would always be getting caught, and then there’s the ugliness factor. Yuck. I decided the best thing to do was just to continue the chart as I had been working it and maintain that design as best I could while decreasing on the edges of the sock. And I’m quite pleased with the result:

And what you see there is, with a few details tweaked, what the final design will look like. As per the rules of Elinor’s contest there will be more than one size, which has been my main challenge given the large, unwieldy chart. In the end I decided the best way to deal with that would be to do what a lot of designers do to make fair isle mitten patterns with multiple sizes: change the gauge. The orange and white socks are designed for my feet, and as a result, they’re kind of big, and I like sturdy yarn so I’m using pretty heavy sock yarns (more on yarn details when I unveil the final product). I’m currently working up a smaller version using more lightweight yarns and so far as I can tell it’s working well, and it’s helping me work the rough edges out of the pattern. Now if I can just finish it all in time to publish by Friday!

Indeed, I finished my mystery socks last night! (If you’re confused about what “mystery socks” are, check out the explanation in my last post.)

(see the deets on rav)

I cast on for these babies on October 1, and finished grafting and weaving in my ends yesterday, on November 11th. Thanks to my newly found love for knitting socks concurrently (thanks to Kirsti for naming that new method in the comments!) this is the fastest I’ve ever finished a pair of socks. It’s no world record, that’s for sure, but I have some serious issues when it comes to knitting socks. See, I really WANT the socks, and I like knitting the socks and all, but I get bored. Really bored. And then I end up casting on for 9 million other things in the meantime, and you get the picture.

I ended up knitting the 64 st size on US0s to fit my hugely fat and flat size 10 feet. I had a blast with this pattern, and I loved the suspense of not knowing what the next section would look like! I think that has a lot to do with why these fit my feet so well – when I had to wait for the next section of the pattern, I was just focused on the material I had to work with and making it fit as well as possible, instead of rushing on to the next section or figuring I’d fudge it in some other way. Thank you, Kirsten, for all your work on this pattern and the whole knitalong process – the socks turned out great and I had a blast!

The yarn is Spinning Colors Fingering, which is hand-dyed in Austin by the fabulous Stephanie. This colorway is called Glory and that it is – glorious. It’s a super saturated shade of yellow with some flecks of peach in there. I’m not sure what the base yarn is but this stuff is soft but feels super durable. I can’t recommend her work enough – if your looking for some really vibrant hand-dyed (and in some cases hand-spun) yarn go have a look at her shop.

Now here is my question for you, dear readers. While top-down socks do tend to fit my feet better, I really do like the way I can use up every bit of yarn when I make socks toe-up. This pair of socks weighs in at 2.9 oz and I have 1.1 oz of yarn left. It’s not a small amount of yarn, but it’s obviously not enough for another pair of socks. What are some good ways to use up sock yarn besides blankets that take 900 years to make and baby-related items? Striped socks? I wonder how much sock yarn one would need for a cute slouchy lacey hat?

Wow, has it really been a whole month since the last time I checked in? Yikes. I’ve been a bit hunkered down with school work, but that definitely doesn’t mean I haven’t been knitting! I spent October knitting along with the Through the Loops Mystery Sock for Socktoberfest. For those of you unfamiliar with the premise, Kirsten publishes a sock pattern in 5 parts, one part each week. First you get the cuff, then the leg, the heel, the foot, and finally the toe. You don’t know what the sock will look like going into it, so it’s a bit of an adventure.

Those people who finish a pair by the end of November are eligible for prizes. In order to motivate myself I thought I’d try something new – I’ve been knitting both socks at once! At first I tried casting them both on the same superlong needle, magic loop style, but this just wasn’t for me. Instead I picked up an extra circular needle and I’ve been switching off between the two socks. First I knit a cuff, then another cuff, then a leg, and another leg, and so on and so on. This is MUCH more interesting to me than knitting one whole sock and then doing the whole thing over again! This will probably end up being the fastest pair of socks I’ve ever knit. I know a month and a half isn’t exactly fast for socks, but I have serious sock finishing issues. For me, this is a miracle. I’m almost done with my second foot section, and since the toes are so small and quick I should have a completed pair to show you in a couple days! I’ll be sure to blog about them with all the details at that point.

My other active WIP is for vestvember! There are vestvember groups on flickr and ravelry, FYI. This is a nice, casual, friendly knitalong. Got a vest you started a long time ago? Come finish it up! Don’t think you’ll finish a vest during the month of November? No biggie!

I had a hard hard time deciding on a vest pattern, but I eventually went for the challenge of knitting my first large colorwork garment, and my first steeked project. It’s Eunny Jang’s Deep V Argyle Vest. (here it is on ravelry) I’m working this in cascade 220 with a nice chocolate brown and robin’s egg blue. I just got into the colorwork section last night and so far I’m having a blast.

The two main runner up vests I was considering were Blustery from My Fashionable Life and Sexy Vesty from Canary Sanctuary. I was particularly inspired by Tina’s tweed vesty. I have yarn in my stash that would be great for each of these, so hopefully I’ll get around to them sooner rather than later! I’ll admit the appeal of knitting a garment that doesn’t involve sleeves is indeed awesome.