Anniversary Socks (For Reals This Time)

It has been a long time coming, but Troy finally has his "anniversary socks." (Now that we are approaching one year from when I started the first ones, it is about time!!)

I started these socks for something to do when we went to a Notre Dame football game last fall. When they came out a little big for me and Troy's original anniversary socks came out a little small for him, these became Troy's socks.

I mentioned they did quite a bit of traveling with me. After the football games, they went to a taping of Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me in Elkhart and a day trip to Chicago. They also went to Missouri and then to Ontario over Christmas. And finally they were complete in mid-January.

And then they sat around waiting for me to take pictures so Troy could start wearing them. Which we finally did this past weekend.

They started with short-row toes:

Troy astutely noticed that they are not quite the same. After doing the first one, I acted on the nagging feeling that I was doing my short rows wrong. I tracked down the tutorial I followed when I first started this method and sure enough I was! So the second sock looks a little better. The turn on the short row is just a little bit smoother.

He also noticed there is a sharp colour break on the left sock, about half way up the foot. Yup, that was a knot. Very annoying in a self-striping yarn, but what can you do? Troy said it reminds him of the aurora borealis so I don't think he minds. :)

Next up to the gusset and short-row heel. I think this is also before I reexamined the short row tutorial.

I did the heel over a massive number of stitches to really make sure it would not be too tight!! To make sure it didn't get too long, I started turning the short rows with two and three stitches left unknit. It seemed to work pretty well.

The "faux argyle" pattern then was continued all around the leg.

And the sock ends with a good stretch of 1x1 rib and my favourite Kitchener bind off.

You can see I used a different yarn. For one thing, there wasn't enough of the main yarn to make the socks long enough. For another I think this wool left over from the original anniversary socks is sturdier and will hold the shape of the ribbing better. The colour matches pretty well so I went with it.

They are a little wild, but mostly muted blues and brown. (Just a little purple.)

Troy says they are not too flashy for him, and I think they look nice.

I can't say too much about the pattern itself. I did get the design from the pattern, but I did my own toe, heel, gusset, changed them to toe-up, etc, etc. The faux argyle pattern is made with twisted stitches (or two-stitch cables). The only "hard" part is that they're done on every row so there are no "resting rows" where you can just knit mindlessly. (A key thing to keep in mind if you, say, bring them to a taping of a radio show and you are sitting in the back row of the balcony and it is rather dark. Just for instance.) On the other hand, this means you can't mix up what row you need to cable on--you have to be doing it all the time, every row.

Project Stats
Started: 2 Nov '13
Finished: 12 Jan '14
Pattern: Business Casual by Tanis Lavallee
Materials: Crystal Palace Yarns Mini Mochi, color 118 Blueberry Pancakes (100 g, $18.40) with a little Berroco Ultra Alpaca Fine (colour 1292) for ribbing