a meaty feast for the feet

 

pattern: toe-up socks w/ short row heels (see below for details)
designer: whoever invented knitting socks from the toe-up?
yarn: pigeonroof studios handspun in Ricochet (Corriedale) and Carnival (Shetland)
needles: Addi Turbo 32 inch circs in US size 3

Adrian made me do it. Or more specifically, she knit a ton of ridiculously beautiful socks using handspun that sparked an intense yearning in me for a pair of my own. Not being a spinner myself, I grabbed some pigeonroof I'd been saving for a rainy day and went to town. The thing was that I only had 127 yards of one and 136 of another, so if I wanted a complete pair of socks I would have to find a way to combine them. Not being all that savvy about the many different fibers, I thought the safest way to mix Corriedale and Shetland would be to use the Corriedale for the feet and Shetland for the cuffs. The colorways fortuitously had enough warm tones in common that they would work well together. 

While looking up a tutorial for a refresher on a figure-8 cast-on, I came across the Easy Toe, by Wendy Johnson. How have I not been using this method for all of my socks? How?! I find the figure-8 a little fussy sometimes, but this? So easy! It truly is the easiest toe-up cast-on ever. I cast on 4 stitches when starting the toe, increasing 4 stitches every row until I had 20 stitches total. Then I increased 4 stitches every other row until I had a total of 40 stitches on the needles. I  knit for about 5 inches, then worked a short row heel. Can I tell you how happy I am that I am no longer mystified by short row heels? I do wish that I had maybe made them just a stitch deeper and not so narrow at the point, but that's not such a big deal. I'll keep that in mind when knitting my next pair. I then went on to knit for 5 rows and work the cuff in a 1x1 rib, binding off with Elizabeth Zimmermann's sewn bind off, which works beautifully. 

 

 

The resulting socks are dense and cozy and just delightful to wear around the house on cold, rainy mornings. Granted, they are meaty. We were joking at SPA about how you could knock someone out with one of them without even having to stuff the requisite rolls of quarters in them. They are way heavy. Wearing them, I can't even squeeze my feet into my loosest fitting clogs. Hence, they will be kick-around-at-home socks, which is kinda decadent and lovely. Once again, hooray for handspun socks!