Socks Ahead of Schedule

On May 16^th,  I blogged about a trip I took to Minnesota.  My friend Judy McL and I had a wonderful series of fiber adventures, including a trip to her local yarn shop, YarnHarbor.

Judy and I both bought the same yarn, a sock yarn in Christmas-y colors of green, red, and white.  And we agreed that we’d only buy the yarn if we promised to knit up the yarn into socks by Christmas.

Well!  I’m actually ahead of schedule!  The yarn in question is a Swedish yarn, Järbo Garn, “mini raggi”, in color way 68104 (and lot 43066).  Approximately 100 grams, and 420 meters.  That was plenty of yarn for a pair of socks.

I took the yarn with me to SOAR  in October as backup travel knitting.  I’d started a pair of socks from some other yarn, but the yarn  wasn’t working out with the pattern (more about this in a future blog post).  So, on my last day at SOAR, I started swatching my “mini raggi”.  Ideas for cables and seed stitch came to me.  I incorporated both into the sock design.  I placed a horse shoe cable down the back of the leg, and two cables that are half seed stitch and half stockinette stitch along the front of the leg with a section of seed stitch in between the cables.  When I got to the foot, I started to narrow the band of seed stitch so that the cables got closer together.  When I got near the toe, I stopped the cables, and continued the remaining seed stitch to the tip of the toe.

Here’s a side view picture (in yesterday's pale sunlight with snow as a backdrop).  You can’t see the horse shoe cable very well.  I’ll need to have someone model these socks for a better picture of front and back.

I rather like the result.  These socks have an alligator vibe to them.  A Christmas alligator?  I plan to knit this pattern again in a different yarn, then write up the pattern for publication.  What do you think?