Hat on Top, Coat Below
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Yoga Socks Times Two (or is it Four?)
November 25, 2020
I’ve been struggling some recently. Nothing huge, nothing dire, just lack of motivation to do much besides play on my coloring book app and watch tv (we’ve somehow gotten up to three streaming services with the addition of a three-month trial of HBOMax to the Disney+ and Netflix we already had). But I couldn’t let November go by without making a journal entry, and I have been knitting on and off, so I even have reasonable content (I could have made two journal entries out of this if I’d found the vim to write about the first project when I finished it, but I did not).
As with the rainbow-ish tank I finished in August, I decided on this new project based on what yarn I had at hand. Most of my stash is buried in boxes in my studio in town, but the bag with the yarn I’d bought when I spent an afternoon with my friend Denise during aroad trip a couple years ago (I miss road trips) has been sitting around not in a box, so I grabbed that and pulled out the skein of Stonehedge Fiber Mill Crazy, which is made from mill ends, so each skein is different. I bought one with a lot of purple in it. Wound into a cake, it looked quite pleasing.
Now what could I make with one skein? A hat, sure, but I have plenty of hats. I decided on yoga socks, not because I’ve started doing yoga, but because socks without toes will be good for wearing after pedicures in the winter time (I do my toes year round because it makes me happy). I poked around on Ravelry a bit and found a pattern called Black Dog Yoga Socks which seemed decent. When I saw there were two photos of an actual black dog in the pattern PDF, I was fully on board. I worked them two at a time on two circular needles, as is my wont with socks. Usually I have a ball of yarn for each sock, but in this case, I knit one from the outside of the cake and one from the inside because I didn’t feel like splitting it up; I’m not sure if I’ve done that before. Since I wasn’t sure about fit, I decided to modify the pattern to do ribbing on the whole top of the foot. They worked up quickly, only a couple weeks from start to finish, working only in short stretches while watching tv (or on one occasion, chatting with friends on Zoom). The new skill I had to learn was creating stitches out of thin air in the middle of the project to start the second side of the heel opening. I’m not sure I did it exactly right, but it works okay and doesn’t look too wonky, so I called it good.
After I finished that first pair of yoga socks, I waited for inspiration to strike for my next project. The answer eventually turned out to be more yoga socks, this time in yarn leftover from making a baby setten years ago. Since I felt more comfortable about them fitting since I’d made the pattern before, I did these as written, with flat knit across the top of the foot. I did the casting on in the middle from memory, and I’m pretty sure I messed it up somehow because it doesn’t look as neat as the first pair, but once they’re on my foot, that part’s on the bottom anyway.
These are a fun, quick project, but since I don’t do pedicures all that often, I don’t need all that many pairs of these, so I think I’ll go for full socks next time, especially since one of the boxes of stuff from my mom’s house that I looked through recently had some of her unused sock yarn in it and one of her sock knitting books. That seems like a sign.
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4 Comments
November 25th, 2020 at 8:13 pm
I remember that yarn! Very cool yoga socks.
November 25th, 2020 at 11:28 pm
Impressive sock knitting skills and gorgeous nails.
December 1st, 2020 at 6:29 pm
Denise, thanks! That was a fun time … when travel is a thing again, I’d love to do it again.
December 1st, 2020 at 6:30 pm
Billy, thank you!