New approach to socks

Socks are a lot of fun to knit. There are several different knitting techniques in the one sock, and each is relatively short, so they go fast. There is always something interesting to do, and you don't get a chance to get bored with any of it.

Except when you have knit several pair. Then they begin to get boring. So we look for doing them in a new way. We will knit socks from the cuff and down to the toe. And to add some variety, we will start them at the toe and work up to the cuff!

Cat Bordhi has a style where she starts at the heel and works towards the toe, and then goes back to the heel and picks up stitches for the leg and works upwards to the cuff. She also will sometimes place both gussets on one side of the foot, or even at the top! Anything to put in something a bit different and add interest to the knitting.

But even that can become boring as well. And so I thought I would do a pair of socks, but approach them differently, and do them in an unusual way. The only thing left for me was to start on one side, and work across the foot to the other! Well, why not?

These socks would be made as tube socks, just to keep them simple. Tube socks will fit most feet comfortably. These will be knit mostly in garter stitch because it is the most versatile and stretches in all directions. This will accommodate fit very well. In order to prevent any bunching up on the top of the foot, I decided to do some horizontal ribbing all along the front of the foot.

Using the blue yarn I spun earlier, I cast on for the length of the sock (foot and leg) and back again! Then I could knit the front and then around the toe and all the way up the back. I would knit as many rows as necessary for the width of the sock, and then cast off on the other side. To close, I would graft both sides of the row together, and it should be almost invisible!

Okay, good theory. Now, to put it into practice! That's always the hard part.

So I did a provisional cast on, so I could knit both sides of this row to do the top and then the bottom of the sock in one row. I would proceed in the same way all across the foot (top, around the toe and then the bottom and up the leg), and then instead of binding off, I would graft together the last two rows.... and garter stitch is relatively easy to graft, isn't it?

As you all know, things in theory don't always work out that well in reality! The same with these socks. I had to find the right cast on that would blend in with the other stitches to be almost invisible (in garter stitch). I finally found one that seemed to work well. The same with the cast off -- it had to blend so imperceptibly as to be invisible, and still have as much stretch as all the other garter stitches. I think I found something that worked very well. In fact, I found the grafting in garter stitch to be quite fun!

The most difficult part seemed to be to determine the number of rows to work across the foot. But once you have the gauge swatch done, it should be easy enough to calculate the number of stitches to cast on, and the number of rows for the size you want to knit. And then I needed to size them for small, medium and large -- as well as short, medium and long!

So here is the result. I show you the socks complete, and also the cast on row and the cast off row. I can't quite tell you which row it is, but I know it is one of them!!