New Sock Pattern Almost Ready

I'm designing a new pair of women's socks.  I love lace and cables, so I am using a pretty easy 4 row lace pattern that I added a cable to the rib.  I made one pair for a friend and am now making a pair for myself to validate the problem.  Here is Gloria in her new socks.

She loves them and I am sort of envious.  I might have to get another skein of Manos del Uruguay Alegria for myself.  I used a Sweet Tomato Heel designed by Cat Borhdi for this pair but will include a regular gusset and slip stitch heel with the pattern.  I made my first YouTube video for Judy Becker's Magic cast on that I use for all my socks.  I love her method and am grateful to Judy, Cat and all the other knitting pioneers that help me get better and more creative with my knitting and designing.  I will be offering this sock on Ravelry.   My sock pattern for my husband has 160 downloads which I thought was way cool.  He loves his socks.

Writing patterns is addictive and I will need to step away after this because it is so time consuming that I don't have time for regular knitting.  I have a sweater to finish and presents to knit for Christmas.  Not too soon to be thinking about presents.  I always start too late!

Free Men's Sock Pattern

I put up a new pattern today on Ravelry.  It's a free pattern for men's socks in a DK weight because my husband has very slender long feet and slender calves, and also needs very cushy socks.  So I designed this to fit his feet and slim calves.  Plus I wanted a pattern in a sport or DK yarn that would be a faster knit because his feet are so LONG!  Check it out for Free!  Download Now

My husband has long slender feet and slender ankles and calves.  He loves and wears the socks I make him and I finally decided I had to find a way to get the best fit for him.  He also needs cushy socks and so I determined I needed a DK weight or sport weight yarn pattern to get that extra cushiness and to make them go faster.  I didn’t find much out there in the way of patterns and as I have made many socks, I decided to design a pattern myself.

I am a fan of Cat Bordhi’s socks and have her wonderful e-book “Cat’s Sweet Tomato Heel Socks” which I highly recommend.  She has wonderful videos to compliment her e-book and I have made several of her patterns already.  I decided that I would use her sweet tomato heel for my husband’s socks.  But I am writing this pattern with a heel flap because I don’t want to step on her work or mislead anyone on how to do that wonderful adaptation.

I also use toe up construction almost exclusively now and knit two at a time magic loop.   Very Pink Knits has a nice tutorial about Magic Loop.   I find this the easiest way to get two socks the same and also get them done in a timely fashion.  You can of course knit them singly and from the top down but I recommend you try it my way.  I love having both socks be finished at once and look exactly the same.  I will give hints and links to videos with help and I am always available for questions. 

Feel free to try on the socks as you go to get the best fit.  I made my husband try them a lot before I decided how and where to put the increases and decreases.  If they don’t fit right, then they slip and aren’t as nice to wear.  I did put the ribbing in the instep but sometimes he gets confused about which one is right and which one is left so I might leave that out of the next pair.  

A Sweater Odyssey

I have this wonderful long black sweater that I bought somewhere and decided I\'d like to make one like it. I have not written a sweater pattern before but why not! It looked simple enough.

I had some brown lace yarn spun from a beautiful soft dark brown cloud llama and a big bag of the fiber so I decided to use that.

I knit the back flat out of stockinette with a new provisional cast on. Then I started on the sleeves. I decided to use a lace pattern as stockinette was too boring. I ripped the sleeves back 4 or 5 times to get the right size shape and pattern desired. Then I ran out of that ball of yarn around the elbows.

Next I ripped back the back piece to redo it in pattern. Hopefully I kept good notes on how I shaped it. More later as I knit an I\'ll add pictures.