Once Upon a Sock: July Edition

Hello again!

It’s the first Thursday of the month, the day a little group of us chat about socks.

I had been feeling a bit guilty knowing today was coming because friends, I have a confession to make: it’s been almost two months since I touched a sock!  (Well, I mean that’s not true, I put socks on most days and thus touch them on a regular basis … but you know what I mean).

What would I talk about today, with my sock knitting mojo gone (well, not so much gone … but other projects have taken precedence)?

And then — following on nicely from yesterday’s post — A Year of Techniques came to the rescue!  The July pattern was released today and it’s for, you guessed it, socks!

The timing couldn’t be better.  I’ve been wanting to get a pair of socks back on the needles.  I wanted something a little more exciting than my usual vanilla socks (cute lace pattern: check!) — and while I have a little sock design in mind that I want to get going on, I haven’t had the mental space for that during the past couple of weeks.

I mean how cute are these?

Since I have the kit for the AYOT summer projects, the yarn was immediately to hand … so I wound up the pink and am all ready to cast on.  These are top down socks, and my plan is to knit them two at a time:

Do you see my, ahem, fancy trick for hand winding balls?

Boy am I missing my ball winder and swift, which is packed away with the rest of our things (we actually discussed keeping it with us and traveling with it, but even I realized that was a bridge too far).  But in a pinch, an old toilet paper roll does the trick.

I think the simple lace is just what I need right now in a sock — something a little bit interesting, but not too taxing.  And I’m sooo excited to try this Coop Knits Sock Yeah yarn.  The colors are beautifully heathered, so they mix and match super nicely … you can just about see the subtle pink peaking through beneath the blue-grey-green of this skein:

Composed of 75% superwash merino and 25% nylon, the yarn feels soft to the touch, but not flimsy — just what you want in a sock yarn.

So I’m off to cast on (using my favorite stretchy cast on: the Twisted German cast on, which I learned today is also called Old Norwegian cast on!)  But you can get plenty more sock talk from my fellow Once Upon a Sock-ers: Paula’s got some nearly completed socks — and a fabulous new hairdo! — over at Spin a Yarn; Kat at Felinity Knits is thinking through some sizing issues with a really awesome and unusually constructed sock; and Stefanie of Wooly Cakes and Wooden Spoons has one sock in hibernation and a new one on the go! Stop by and see what they’re up to — and if you’d like to join us for monthly sock chat, please do!

Hope you have a great end to the first week of July.

xo K