Alaska Rocks! (and I made some socks)

Pretty much the only thing I bought while in Alaska was yarn. Delicious, lovely, hand-dyed in Alaska yarn. And I made these socks out of 1 of the skeins while I was still in Alaska. The yarn is superwash Merino and the socks were knit on US 6, so they were rather speedy.


Ta-da!


These socks have both a short-row heel and a short-row toe. Though the cool thing about these is that they have kind of a strange assembly.

I was out of town when I made these with had no access to the internet and I wasn't sure if I remembered how to graft properly, so I decided to make these in a way that required no grafting.


I started by casting on 1/2 on the total stitches onto 2 needles at once. Then I made it a sort of provisional cast-on by purling the stitches off of one of the cast on needles and keeping them on the other cast on needle. If that doesn't really make sense, it's ok...it's hard to be entirely clear with no specific pictures.


Anyway, I made the short-row toe to start and then, when the toe was done, connected it in the round and made the foot, then made the heel, then the leg, and the cast-off edge was also done on two needles at once to make it extra loose.


The socks themselves are rather loose and comfy and very very soft. This yarn was wonderful to work with. As the picture above shows, the heel can sort of pucker when you point your toe because it's not that tight. But when the foot is relaxed, everything fits delightfully.

Overall, it was a very fun project. They were my first toe-up pair and I was able to just knit until the yarn was gone, making them much taller than I initially anticipated. Very cool.