Jane's Journal

One of my "finish this before the end of the year" projects was to 'fix' the Senbonzakura socks I knitted in this years Sock Madness. Although they were the right size for my feet right off the bat at the minimum requirements for the round (thanks to an absurdly tall row gauge), the socks didn't feel quite right. To figure out what was bugging me about them, I wore them around the house for a Saturday and finally put my finger on the problem: the socks sagged and didn't stay up high enough. My sweatpants have pretty short legs, so I need tall socks or suffer from cold shins, and these were definitely too short.

The problem with the Senbonzakura was that they were knit top-down. So I couldn't just take the bind-off edge off like you would with bottom-up socks and make a longer leg. To make it fit perfectly, I figured I'd need to knit a cuff and attach it to the socks in some way, making sure both were top-down. And so I set to work.
The notes on Ravelry stated I'd knit these on 2.5mm needles, and that I'd knit the 76 stitch version. Sounded easy enough! Let's do it.



This close to the winter solstice, taking pictures that had enough light was a bit of a challenge, but after finishing the first cuff I picked up a row of stitches on the cast-on edge and figured out a way to attach the two separate sock pieces together. The simplest solution was probably a variation of a three-needle bind-off.
I put the cuff over the old sock, held the needles of both parts behind each other in my left hand, and used an extra needle to knit through both the stitch on the cuff and the stitch on the sock. Once I had two stitches on my right needle, I bound off one stitch. It worked well enough.

But why oh why was I so adamant of knitting the cuff seperately anyway? There was no way my k2p2 cuff was going to match up with the intricate pattern of the rest of the sock, and I hadn't even tried to make them match. In my mind, the top-down socks needed a top-down cuff. But this is only true if you want to match the pattern of the sock to the new cuff.

These new cuffs would not match anything of the already-existing sock, in part because the original sock had a p2, k1tbl cuff with mock cables. I had no desire to repeat it since -- to be honest -- the leg of the sock had very little stretch in it. That was the reason why the socks didn't stay up high enough in the first place!
So...why hadn't I just picked up stitches at the top of the leg, and knit the cuff bottom-up from there?



That is exactly what I did for the second sock. I picked up stitches and knit that cuff bottom-up. On the outside the difference wasn't very visible, but on the inside you could see an extra ridge for the sock I had finished with the three-needle bind-off. And, even worse: the three-needle bind-off was a little bit more tight than the other one, leaving an ugly ridge on the outside of the sock just below the cuff if I wore it.
There was no other solution: I would have to frog the first new cuff I knit, and knit it the same way as the second new cuff: picking up stitches from the top of the leg upwards, binding off loosely at the end. And that is exactly what I did:



On the sock blockers the socks still look a bit low -- I always love socks that get right to the top of the blocker or even extend a little bit beyond that. But, measuring the new height against a regular pair of cotton socks -- they're almost exactly the same length now. And that's good enough for me.
I can now finally start wearing my Senbonzakura's...and I still beat the politicians with fixing this sock to their trying to form a new government. Guess that makes me super speedy.

I posted about this plan in January 2020, in the lush days of pre-Covid. And yesterday, my plan has finally come to fruition.

"...the bottom pair, with orange and blue contrasts, are Eisirt's socks. He's a quirky man. He wears one sock with a blue toe and one sock with an orange toe because I gave him BOTH of these pairs to wear. So he refuses to wear them as a true pair. He mixes them up as soon as they come from the washing machine.
I am going to throw him a curveball... I have enough of this yarn left to knit one more pair, and I've got a purple skein to do the contrasts with. He can mix it up EVEN more. One orange and blue. One blue and purple. One purple and orange. He probably will, too.
Triplet-socks."

The pair with purple contrasts is finally done. I knit Envy, a pattern by Dutch designer Renée Kies. It's a simple k2,p2 pattern that jumps every six rows. Of course I made them mirror images and matched the striping on both, after my cousin Gea once remarked on non-matching stripes on self-striping yarn and I'll sure show her grrrr.



I don't mind doing k2, p2, but after the heelturn I did the sole of the sock in stockinette. It was a simple enough sock to knit, and done in 2 weeks flat. It helped that there was a visit to the inlaws and 2 long hours in the car with enough light to knit by. (Eisirt and I always do halfsies on the drive, so I drove an hour to get to Breukelen and then on the way back I drove from Breukelen home. He drove the rest with me knitting next to him.)

The pattern on all three of these is quite subtle because a more intricate pattern would be lost on this self-striping yarn, and I am very happy this weird little plan was finished before one of the other socks was too old. They do look well-used and loved.
Here are the triplets:



Orange: Jeck
Blue: Tramlines
Purple: Envy

When I wrote about my knitting plans for 2021 I was hesitant to make ambitious plans. I figured with Covid still raging, I shouldn't put any more obligations on my own shoulders. I wasn't sure how well I'd cope with the imaginary, but oh so real burden, of ambitious plans.
But I find those little loose ends, those half-made plans, are the first ones to pick up now. They don't require much thought, and are easy to get to work on. Just grab a half-made plan, cast on and GO.

Eisirt is a little sad that I spoiled his running gag, when someone would comment on his socks not matching. "Weird huh....I have a pair just like this at home!"

After bowing out of the Madness did I sigh and throw my needles aside?
Did I find a new hobby?
No way! I have so many pretty socks to knit, I'd better get to it.



During the Madness I wrote about how I would no longer buy Drops yarn (like Drops Fabel) and never knit or crochet any of the Drops patterns because they steal other people's patterns and force Local Yarn shops to run sales that are unprofitable for them. I mentioned wanting to get rid of the Fabel from my stash in a sideways manner on the Ravelry forums and Helga said she'd happily take the rest of it off my hands. And then a pandemic happened and we were quarantined.

Somehow, this Madness adopted this as a second purpose. Of course the first purpose of the Madness is to have fun during the competition, but now I also tried to use up as much Drops: Fabel yarn from my stash as I could.
After frogging the Lacy not Lazy socks from Round 3, the bordeaux Fabel yarn I was using came free again, and I wanted to knit a fun sock from my Soxx book. I packed some scraps of blue yarn from the scrap bin as well. The original plan was to use the blue scraps as contrast colour, and the bordeaux as main colour. They had enough contrast. but it just didn't look right. So after knitting both cuffs in lavender blue, they were frogged.
Adding a scrap of white Fabel did the trick! Now it's a wonderfully fun sock. I knit all of what you see in the picture since this morning!

Using scraps is always a bit of a fun challenge. This time I am cutting all scraps in two to make sure I get two socks that are very nearly identical.
I'm not sure I will make it with the yarn I have, but it's an easy thing to add more scraps of blue. I may need to knit the foot in another colour if my white runs out though...

...and it's all good. It's fun! It's simple. It's striking. And it's almost Kings-day worthy.