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kniteracyI've charted the lace pattern, which like so many of the patterns we love, was lifted from a Barbara Walker Treasury, with some bits added in for interest.
Technical Bits
These socks are sized for me-size feet, which means they're probably too big for most women. But I knitted the socks on 3.25mm needles, so if your feet are smaller you can probably just swap down to smaller needles.
I learned the square garter stitch toe technique from Lucy Neatby's Cool Socks, Warm Feet. The applied i-cord cast off is not difficult, but you do need to be careful not to work it too tightly. My aim was to design an edge that would look great on top of the rippling lace pattern, and I'm not fond of standard ribbing on socks that have more than a little patterning going on.
If you download the pattern and decide to knit the socks, please let me know how it goes and send me a photograph of your socks, whether in progress or finished. And of course, if you have trouble following the pattern or it doesn't work out for you, drop a comment here or email me at my LJ email address to let me know where you've found problems. I admit that I'm not a slavish pattern-follower and that anomalies in patterns don't bother me overmuch: I just compensate and knit what works. I know that doesn't work for everybody, and pattern writing is a skill, so please let me know what does and doesn't work for you. This is the first formal pattern I've really written out. Most of the patterns I present here and in classes are more recipes or plans than formal patterns.
For those of you who haven't done toe-up socks with a gusset before, the architecture of the piece may seem foreign to you. But there are good reasons to work toe-up, particularly if you have large feet: you can be sure you won't use too much yarn on the first sock if you're careful with measuring.
While I'm at it, here's my very simple method of making sure I have enough yarn for a pair of socks: I have a kitchen scale. That's pretty much it. My kitchen scale measures in both grams and ounces, and it's quite sensitive: it's a little battery-operated digital one that we got from Sainsbury's. A recent discussion in one of my classes at I Knit London revealed that many of us have bought kitchen scales, or at least bought more sensitive ones, for the sole purpose of weighing yarn. If I'm worried I'm using too much wool, I just weigh the amount of wool I have left. These socks were made using Opal sock wool, which comes in skeins of 100 grams. All I do is make sure I have more than 50g of wool left before I cast off the first sock. When using self-patterning or self-striping wool, if I want to make the socks match, I watch the colour changes in the wool, and I pull out and save for darning the wool that's in the wrong pattern place after I've finished sock number one. If I'm careful to make sure I have significantly more than 50g left (I had 64 left after the first Razor's Edge sock), I can be relatively sure of getting a matching pair of socks. Of course, you don't always want a matching pair of socks, but I did for this pair. I also shamelessly ensured that the entire applied i-cord would be all the dark blue colour by unwrapping the outside of my centre-pull ball until I got to that blue. Then I snipped it and joined it to the blue at the top of the sock when I realised it wasn't going to go all the way around: applied i-cord takes more wool than a single-strand castoff because you're knitting the i-cord onto the sock cuff itself.
Razor's Edge Sock Pattern (.pdf)
Technical Bits
These socks are sized for me-size feet, which means they're probably too big for most women. But I knitted the socks on 3.25mm needles, so if your feet are smaller you can probably just swap down to smaller needles.
I learned the square garter stitch toe technique from Lucy Neatby's Cool Socks, Warm Feet. The applied i-cord cast off is not difficult, but you do need to be careful not to work it too tightly. My aim was to design an edge that would look great on top of the rippling lace pattern, and I'm not fond of standard ribbing on socks that have more than a little patterning going on.
If you download the pattern and decide to knit the socks, please let me know how it goes and send me a photograph of your socks, whether in progress or finished. And of course, if you have trouble following the pattern or it doesn't work out for you, drop a comment here or email me at my LJ email address to let me know where you've found problems. I admit that I'm not a slavish pattern-follower and that anomalies in patterns don't bother me overmuch: I just compensate and knit what works. I know that doesn't work for everybody, and pattern writing is a skill, so please let me know what does and doesn't work for you. This is the first formal pattern I've really written out. Most of the patterns I present here and in classes are more recipes or plans than formal patterns.
For those of you who haven't done toe-up socks with a gusset before, the architecture of the piece may seem foreign to you. But there are good reasons to work toe-up, particularly if you have large feet: you can be sure you won't use too much yarn on the first sock if you're careful with measuring.
While I'm at it, here's my very simple method of making sure I have enough yarn for a pair of socks: I have a kitchen scale. That's pretty much it. My kitchen scale measures in both grams and ounces, and it's quite sensitive: it's a little battery-operated digital one that we got from Sainsbury's. A recent discussion in one of my classes at I Knit London revealed that many of us have bought kitchen scales, or at least bought more sensitive ones, for the sole purpose of weighing yarn. If I'm worried I'm using too much wool, I just weigh the amount of wool I have left. These socks were made using Opal sock wool, which comes in skeins of 100 grams. All I do is make sure I have more than 50g of wool left before I cast off the first sock. When using self-patterning or self-striping wool, if I want to make the socks match, I watch the colour changes in the wool, and I pull out and save for darning the wool that's in the wrong pattern place after I've finished sock number one. If I'm careful to make sure I have significantly more than 50g left (I had 64 left after the first Razor's Edge sock), I can be relatively sure of getting a matching pair of socks. Of course, you don't always want a matching pair of socks, but I did for this pair. I also shamelessly ensured that the entire applied i-cord would be all the dark blue colour by unwrapping the outside of my centre-pull ball until I got to that blue. Then I snipped it and joined it to the blue at the top of the sock when I realised it wasn't going to go all the way around: applied i-cord takes more wool than a single-strand castoff because you're knitting the i-cord onto the sock cuff itself.
Razor's Edge Sock Pattern (.pdf)
