Socks for my Son

Last year I knit a pair of self striping socks for our son, before I had any idea of buying a circular sock machine. This pair took forever to knit due to getting side tracked with other projects. The socks have been finished for a while, but I could not post about the project until after I gave them to James for Christmas.

I used Schachenmayr 4-ply self striping yarn, a German brand.

I had knit James a pair of socks in the past out of the same yarn, in a different color-way. I did not have a record of how many stitches around I used for the other pair, but I did have some notes on what the width of his sock should be. He has narrow feet like me.

I cast on for toe up socks, and then knitted the increase rows until I got to what I thought was probably the right number of stitches. It is hard to tell how wide across it is going to be until you knit a couple of inches of foot after the toe. I put a “lifeline” in before starting the even foot rows. A lifeline is when you put a piece of waste yarn in a row of stitches, so that if you have to undo the knitting, you can quickly rip back the rows up to the lifeline, without accidentally dropping any stitches. The string holds the stitches so you can easily put them back on the needle. I have never used a lifeline before, but it seemed brilliant in this situation, in case I needed to un knit the foot rows and add more stitches to make the socks wider around.

I knit the toes one at a time, but then put both socks on magic loop needles for knitting two at a time once I was on the foot part.

I brought the socks with me on an outing when we were in Arizona last winter.

In the middle of knitting the socks, I started a different higher priority project, so the socks went on the back burner. I put the stitches on waste yarn and set it aside so I could use my size 1 circular needles for the other project. Later I knitted on the socks again.

When I got close to the place to start the heel, I added some stitches on each side to make the short row heel fit better, using the Custom Toe Up Socks course from the School of Sweet Georgia as a guide.

I don’t know how many times I have lost track or made a mistake when doing increase rows alternating with plain rows. More than once I have been going along thinking everything is fine, and then I realize that I have more stitches on one side than the other, or somewhere. Or else I lose track of whether I am on an increase row or a knit even row. The increased stitches look different, but sometimes it is hard to tell.

I came up with a way to solve both of these problems. When I got to the increasing stitches for the gusset section, I put markers on each side of the original 34 stitches on that half of the sock. As I added stitches, they were on the outside of the marker. This way I could see how many stitches had been added to the original, without counting every single stitch. I also put another stitch marker on as I was knitting the increase row. Then when I came around again, I removed it and knew it was time for an even row.

After adding a couple of stitches on each side I worked the Fish Lips Kiss heel, one sock at a time. I prefer to do the heels one at a time, and then put both of the socks back on the needles for the cuff.

I continued working on these socks over the summer when the young adult kids were playing Kubb at the lake. They are too old to be kids. Are they still “young” adults when they are in their late 20’s?. What do we call them? What do we call us? Anyway, I had never heard of Kubb until we went to a birthday party for one of Wayne’s friends at a brew pub. They had an area for outdoor games, including Kubb. One of the cousins brought this game to the lake. They all had a blast throwing blocks of wood, trying to knock over other blocks of wood. That is about all I can tell you about this Swedish game. You can read more here if you are interested.

I also knitted while sitting on the beach at the family cabin.

I don’t remember where the next photo was taken, but the socks were almost done at this point.

The socks were finally finished in the fall. I put them away until Christmas.

We spent Christmas morning at our son’s house, watching the gift opening with his in-laws. Our 18 month old granddaughter got the most gifts, of course. The socks fit James, and I think he liked them.

When our kids were growing up I put a lot of effort into creating a special Christmas morning experience. As the kids got older and moved on I had a hard time with the transition, and there were a few years when I was pretty stressed out and no one else seemed to appreciate it. After we moved, and during Covid, there were a couple of very strange holidays. There was one year (2020?) when Wayne and I were alone for the first time ever, and there were a couple of years when plans were disrupted by people getting covid.

Today I am fine with wherever we are and however things play out, for the most part. I do not need a whole pile of gifts, or anything expensive, but it is nice to have at least one thing to open. Wayne needed some direction on what to get for me. By the time we talked about it, it was too late to order something online, so I suggested he could go to the LYS near James’s house in St. Paul, The Yarnery, and pick out some yarn that he would like for socks for himself. He was intimidated, but I described what kind of yarn to buy and told him to ask the sales people for guidance.

On Christmas morning I did have a couple of gifts. James and his wife gave us a gift certificate to see a play at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis. The box from Wayne to me contained FOUR skeins of Schachenmayr Regia sock yarn in colorways he liked. Interestingly, that is the same brand as the yarn I used for the socks I had made for James.

I look forward to knitting socks with my new circular sock machine. First I have to figure out how to make heels on the CSM without dropping stitches all over the place. That is my goal while we are in Arizona for the winter.