Socks Re-Do

I made this pair of socks two years ago when we were in Arizona (click here for blog post). They looked great but they did not fit right. The pattern was complicated, they took forever to complete, there were too few stitches around, and the cable pattern made them even tighter. I used a new heel pattern that I started in the wrong place. They ended up being too long and too narrow.

I considered re-doing the toes to make them shorter, and giving them to my aunt who is very petite. I assumed her feet would be small. It turned out they were not that much smaller than mine, so they would not fit her either.

After a year of pondering this problem, I decided to “frog” (rip out) the socks and start over. The Madelinetosh Twist Light yarn is good quality and I really like it, so better to have a pair of socks I can actually wear. Following is a photo of the original skein of yarn.

One of the things I like about knitting is that if, or rather when, you make a mistake, you can unravel that section and do it over again. Or even frog an entire finished object and reuse the yarn. I used to sew clothes back in the day. Once you cut the pattern pieces out of the fabric, there is only so much you can do if you make a mistake. You can’t get the original length of fabric back. I have read about people who want to knit with good quality yarn, but do not have the budget for it. They find really nice sweaters at thrift shops, unravel them, and use the yarn for something else. There are many tips online about how to pick out sweaters that will work best for this.

Unraveled yarn is very kinky, as the wool remembers the state it has been in. It is OK to knit with kinky yarn, but I thought it would be distracting. Instead of rolling the yarn into a ball as I unraveled it, I wound it into skeins on the back of a chair, so it would be ready for washing to remove the kinks.

After tying the skeins and removing from the chair, they bunched up into funny looking blobs like big kitchen scrubbers. I do no know why one of the skeins looks smaller. As far as I know the two socks were the same size. I might have wrapped the one on the left of the photo tighter around the chair as it relaxed into a smaller blob than the other one.

I was recently reading about sock blanks on the School of Sweet Georgia web site. A sock blank is sock yarn that has been machine knitted flat or into a tube. White sock blanks are dyed for self striping yarn. They can be purchased white or already dyed. You start at one end and knit directly with the yarn as you unravel it, in which case it will be kinky like my yarn above.

Following is a photo of a sock blank from Sweet Georgia Yarns. You can see how colors have been added in gradations for self striping socks.

Following is a photo of my unraveled sock yarn soaking with some hand knit socks.

The yarn looked good, and was ready for a new project after drying flat. One of the skeins looks a bit smaller. The two original socks should have been the same, but maybe they weren’t.

I don’t have my ball winder in the RV, so I rolled the two skeins of yarn into balls the old fashioned way by hand and I was ready to begin. I liked the School of Sweet Georgia pattern “Custom Toe Up Socks” that I used for the green socks I knit recently, so I used it again for this pair.

I have never been much of a swatch maker. The pattern (click here for the link) includes making a “faux circular swatch”, so it seemed like a good exercise to follow the pattern and make the swatch. The faux swatch instructions are also available as a stand alone module (click here for the link). Knitting stockinette stitch in the round will get you a slightly different gauge than knitting stockinette flat back and forth. The faux circular swatch is knit flat on double pointed or circular needles so you can slide the yarn across to the other side after each row, creating a long loop on the back where the working yarn is carried across. Sort of messy looking but resulting in a more accurate gauge. Sometime I will knit a regular plain old swatch AND a faux circular swatch with the same yarn to see how different they are. The next photos are the front and back of my faux circular swatch.

I measured my gauge using the swatch, and then using my foot length and circumference, I filled in the worksheet for the School of Sweet Georgia toe up socks pattern. I was pretty sure I would want to have 60 stitches around based on the other socks I have made using the same yarn, so luckily that is what the worksheet came up with.

The pattern suggests using Judy’s Magic Cast-On for the stitches at the beginning of the toe. I have used this before, but it had been awhile. The School of Sweet Georgia pattern has video showing how to do it in detail, and there are other videos online. It is a good cast-on for toe up socks but I find it a bit mind bending. I watched the video multiple times and started over more than once before I got it right and felt comfortable. The toe is easy once you get the stitches cast on. I ripped out the swatch and wound that yarn back on the ball since I needed all of it for the second sock. That yarn was kinky, but I went ahead and knit with it that way.

The two balls of yarn I was using for the socks re-do came from the original two socks, which began as one skein of yarn. The two new socks started out with one lighter in color and one slightly bigger than the other. One of the balls is bigger, so now I am wondering if the bigger blob of kinky yarn (pictured above) is due to the yarn being different rather than the way I wound it on the chair. The differences in color and weight are a mystery. The kinky looking yarn on the smaller and lighter ball is due to being unwound from the swatch.

I worked on sock knitting feverishly over a period of several days, including bringing the project in the car on some outings. We went on the Apache Trail Scenic drive (north and east of Phoenix) when Wayne’s brother was visiting. We have done this multiple times, but it is always a great outing with visitors. We took a photo at a scenic overlook, and then later I kicked myself because I should have been holding the sock knitting project.

At the end of our scenic drive we ate dinner in a Mexican restaurant in Apache Junction. I got a photo with my knitting there, sitting next to my sister-in-law Marlene.

I was worried about running out of yarn, after I realized that I was using it up faster for this pair than the original pair I ripped out due to having more stitches around. It was a relief when I finished the Fish Lips Kiss heels and there was plenty of yarn left for cuffs.

I was not sure how long the remaining yarn would last. Shorter cuffs would stay up better with K1P1 ribbing, so I went with that. Following is a photo of the socks with several inches of cuff in K1P1 ribbing. Hmmm, it is OK but not my favorite look.

As it turned out there was plenty of yarn for the cuffs. These socks seem boring compared to the original pair I ripped out, and to “fancy” socks I have seen other people knit. I have to remember not to compare myself with other people as far as knitting, and also anything else in life. Each day is different. Sometimes we barely make it through the day. Other days we are up for more challenging tasks. Each person is on their own journey.

After getting toward the end of the yarn with the K1P1 ribbing, I was not liking it, and it seemed a little bit tight at the point where the ribbing started. I considered doing a picot bind-off to make it more interesting. I had that dreaded decision of “should I just keep going and it will be fine” versus “rip back the part that isn’t quite right and do it over”.

The “Up North Socks” I knit last fall fit very well and have a similar gauge, so I looked at my notes for how many stitches I had at different points in the sock. Without going into too much detail for the non knitters (I probably lost them a long time ago) the ribbing had more stitches than the foot. If the only problem was the style of ribbing, I might have just left it, but it seemed worth it to adjust the fit also. Soooooo I ripped the ribbing and a few more rows out until I had the right number of stitches around for a cuff that would fit me better. On the same day I also wasted an hour and a half on a weaving project, but that will be a story for another post.

Following is another photo after re-knitting the cuff in K2P2 ribbing, with a couple of more stitches around. I like the look better, and more importantly, they fit me better.

Meanwhile I saw an ad from Twice Sheared Sheep for “Tip Ties”, an ingenious version of knitting needle tip protectors. I have tried to use old fashioned needle tip protectors to keep my knitting from falling off, but they do not stay on. This product is a flexible tube that you stick on the ends of your needles. They stay on, keep the knitting from coming off, and also keep the needles from poking through my fabric project bag.

As I got to the end of the yarn, I wanted to use up as much as I could, without running out in the middle of binding off. I unwound and measured the remaining yarn, adding some markers so I could see how much was used up knitting one round. After some math, I estimated that I could knit for another inch or so before binding off.

After binding off the first half of the stitches on both socks, there was not enough yarn to bind off the second half of one sock, and lots of yarn left on the other sock. I don’t know how I could have knit more rows on one sock when knitting two at a time. And it is consistent with one of the balls of yarn being bigger at the beginning. Maybe one of the original socks was bigger. I used some of the yarn from the sock that had extra to finish binding off the other one. When I was all done I had about five inches of ribbing and a total of one yard of yarn leftover.

After hand washing and laying out flat to dry, the socks were done.

My husband is a big fisherman. We have all seen photos of people with their fish held way out towards the camera to make them look bigger. I saw some photos of a woman showing off her hand knit socks like they were a fish, so I copied the idea.

The socks fit well and I like them. No fancy pattern or bling. They are boring, but I guess I like boring and functional.