TKN: Constructing Checkerboard Lace Socks
Dec. 5th, 2005 04:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kniteracyThe Knitting News: Constructing Checkerboard Lace Socks
Sometime back while we were in Singapore, perhaps not long after my birthday, I think, I ordered a copy of Queen Kahuna's Crazy Toes and Heels sock construction book.
I love the way Mary Ann Beattie, the author of this book, explains sock construction in a master-class type tone, offering plenty of photographs and step-by-step instructions. And I'm now halfway through my third pair of socks made around her plan for toe-up socks that look and feel like traditional cuff-down knitted socks with gussets and heel flaps. No, really.
You know you want the gory details, plus photographs!
Don't you?
Don't worry, both ESDs know that their Christmas presents this year will include socks; they've already tried one sock apiece on for fit and happiness. I've been branching out into lace;![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mokatiki's socks have a lacy cuff which I like very much, but I wanted to play with some more traditional laces, so I asked pola_bear if it'd be all right if I made her socks a big old lace experiment. She didn't threaten to smother me with a plastic bag, so off I went.
Ih, so some lace socks are really girly and some lace socks are really dumb looking and some lace socks look like a whole lot of trouble and some lace socks are, ooh. Enter Northwest Kniterati's Alhambra Socks. Danger, the link is to a .pdf pattern which includes some beautiful photographs.
The lace pattern was just what I wanted-- something that was definitely lacy but not so complex that it couldn't be knitted on the Tube, pretty but not frilly and uber-feminine, and simple and regular enough that it would work with the sock wool PB picked out (Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock in colour 50, "Amish," won in a contest where I helped nameniquildrvr's cat Spike).
Because the lace pattern was regular and geometric, without really a 'top' or 'bottom', it didn't have to be reworked for toe-up socks, thank the gods. But still, some modifications had to be made, and we began with -- a mistake.
I misread the pattern when I first started working out how many repeats to do on PB's socks. I misread it as being a multiple of twelve stitches when in fact it is a multiple of eighteen. I was getting nine stitches to the inch on 2.5mm needles (US2), and it was a nice, dense fabric. Now, I make socks to measure, so I knew that I needed about 81 stitches to fit comfortably around the ESD's foot. So I increased to 84 stitches, because I was looking for a multiple of twelve.
Worse, I didn't catch the mistake until after the heel turn, because the number of stitches the sock in the pattern is worked over, 72, is actually both a multiple of twelve and eighteen. I just thought that over the front of the sock, I'd go ahead and knit the lace to the 36 stitches with three plain stitches on either side of the top of the foot, since 42 stitches in that pattern would have meant two and a half repeats of the pattern, not two. In retrospect, two and a half repeats would have worked just fine-- and in retrospect, the fact that I was only getting two and a half repeats over 42 stitches with a lace pattern I really thought was a multiple of twelve should have set off some knitmath warning bells in my furry little brain, but it did not.
But let me take you through the joys of sock construction, because I want to talk about toe-up socks with gussets and heel flaps, and like I said, I didn't realise my mistake until after the heel turn.
See, I love this method of sock construction, but I have been having some trouble getting it into my fingers, largely because I can knit straight-to-the-heel, short-row-heel-and-toe socks from the toe up pretty much in my sleep.mokatiki's socks were supposed to be toe-up gusset socks, but after I finished the toe-up gusset socks that were supposed to be for me but ended up being for my sister when we were in the US, I started on mokatiki's socks. I think I cast them on on the train for New York City, so I knit the toes and all on the trip and then was on the foot while we were getting together documents for our trip to the British Consulate in New York. There's a point, as you're merrily knitting around the foot of the sock and it's all beautiful mindless zen knitting, where you have to start the gusset. I already knew where this point was on mokatiki's sock, but I must have been mighty nervous that day, because I passed it at some point while we were in line at the Consulate, and so I forged ahead and made socks with short-row heels for her because I hate to rip socks, don't ever rip socks if I can possibly avoid it. It's because I knit socks very densely (hers were being made on 2.0mm needles), and that makes it hard to get the needle back through live loops when you rip out, and that means you drop lots of stitches and have to have Games and Fun getting them all back on the needles.
So anyway, this time I resolved that I would knit the gussets, and I managed to catch gusset point because it happened last week at Sharps when I had materials for sock measuring nearby, so I duly began the gussets and then worried about whether or not I should have, since they added extra bulk on a lace pattern I already had to keep track of. Somehow, I muddled through.
The heel turn on these socks is really simple, but the big drawback to the master-class style book, where she goes through everything step by step with half a dozen photographs, is that there's no quick and dirty set of instructions for people who've done it before. So I found myself flipping through this silly A4 sized book and looking like I was slavishly following a pattern, when in fact all I wanted to do was figure out the way to change the slipstitch pattern while turning the heel. (Asaunty_marion suggested, because she sees the obvious and I do not, I have now made my own quick and dirty cheat sheet and put it on my PDA. Duh!) Anyway, the great thing about this gusset and heel combination method is that you don't actually pick up any stitches to join the gusset to the heel flap: it all comes together by melding stitches together rather than picking them up. I know you have to see this to really get it; just trust me.
So when I got to the end of the heel turn, I decided it would look better if I just started the lace pattern at the three-stitch-in marker where I'd started it before, since it would be seamlessly carried on from the pattern on the top of the foot. But then, I got to the end of the round and didn't have enough stitches and counted and counted and couldn't figure it out and figured, oh, well-- I've somehow got five and a half repeats in here or something, there'll just be a jog-- but that wasn't right either, and eight rounds later, after a quick math and proportion discussion withfilceolaire, whose sense of patterning really does come in handy sometimes, I found myself, yes, ripping socks. Aie! It was horrible. I ripped and dropped and ripped and dropped and basically when it was all over I had to sit under a bright light and do a whole round of slip stitches to pick everything up and get all the loops in the right direction and all that.
And then we started working on how to fix that pattern. In the end, J came up with something that isn't perfect, but worked. Rather than keeping the perfect checkerboard layout on the back, he figured that since 48 (the number of stitches not in the 36-stitch front lace pattern) was divisible by sixteen, it would be OK if I just narrowed the lace panel on the back by one stitch. And he was right. It's not perfect, but I don't think anyone who isn't looking for it will notice the slight difference in patterning on the back. This morning I completed the about 1" of k2p2 ribbing on the top and cast off with a crochet hook to give it a loose, scalloped edge, and now I'm working on the toe of the second sock, in which I will very carefully have to make exactly the same mistakes as in the first one, except for that whole ripping-out-eight-rounds-after-the-heel-turn thing. Not gonna do that part.
Here's your prize for having read this far: photographs!
Here's a side view, so you can see the (funny-looking but very good-fitting) construction of the sock itself, with bonus look at the just-begun toe of the second sock.
And here's the top of the sock, so you can see how the lace looks. It looks much better when stretched over the foot.
Sometime back while we were in Singapore, perhaps not long after my birthday, I think, I ordered a copy of Queen Kahuna's Crazy Toes and Heels sock construction book.
I love the way Mary Ann Beattie, the author of this book, explains sock construction in a master-class type tone, offering plenty of photographs and step-by-step instructions. And I'm now halfway through my third pair of socks made around her plan for toe-up socks that look and feel like traditional cuff-down knitted socks with gussets and heel flaps. No, really.
You know you want the gory details, plus photographs!
Don't you?
Don't worry, both ESDs know that their Christmas presents this year will include socks; they've already tried one sock apiece on for fit and happiness. I've been branching out into lace;
mokatiki's socks have a lacy cuff which I like very much, but I wanted to play with some more traditional laces, so I asked pola_bear if it'd be all right if I made her socks a big old lace experiment. She didn't threaten to smother me with a plastic bag, so off I went.Ih, so some lace socks are really girly and some lace socks are really dumb looking and some lace socks look like a whole lot of trouble and some lace socks are, ooh. Enter Northwest Kniterati's Alhambra Socks. Danger, the link is to a .pdf pattern which includes some beautiful photographs.
The lace pattern was just what I wanted-- something that was definitely lacy but not so complex that it couldn't be knitted on the Tube, pretty but not frilly and uber-feminine, and simple and regular enough that it would work with the sock wool PB picked out (Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock in colour 50, "Amish," won in a contest where I helped name
niquildrvr's cat Spike). Because the lace pattern was regular and geometric, without really a 'top' or 'bottom', it didn't have to be reworked for toe-up socks, thank the gods. But still, some modifications had to be made, and we began with -- a mistake.
I misread the pattern when I first started working out how many repeats to do on PB's socks. I misread it as being a multiple of twelve stitches when in fact it is a multiple of eighteen. I was getting nine stitches to the inch on 2.5mm needles (US2), and it was a nice, dense fabric. Now, I make socks to measure, so I knew that I needed about 81 stitches to fit comfortably around the ESD's foot. So I increased to 84 stitches, because I was looking for a multiple of twelve.
Worse, I didn't catch the mistake until after the heel turn, because the number of stitches the sock in the pattern is worked over, 72, is actually both a multiple of twelve and eighteen. I just thought that over the front of the sock, I'd go ahead and knit the lace to the 36 stitches with three plain stitches on either side of the top of the foot, since 42 stitches in that pattern would have meant two and a half repeats of the pattern, not two. In retrospect, two and a half repeats would have worked just fine-- and in retrospect, the fact that I was only getting two and a half repeats over 42 stitches with a lace pattern I really thought was a multiple of twelve should have set off some knitmath warning bells in my furry little brain, but it did not.
But let me take you through the joys of sock construction, because I want to talk about toe-up socks with gussets and heel flaps, and like I said, I didn't realise my mistake until after the heel turn.
See, I love this method of sock construction, but I have been having some trouble getting it into my fingers, largely because I can knit straight-to-the-heel, short-row-heel-and-toe socks from the toe up pretty much in my sleep.
mokatiki's socks were supposed to be toe-up gusset socks, but after I finished the toe-up gusset socks that were supposed to be for me but ended up being for my sister when we were in the US, I started on mokatiki's socks. I think I cast them on on the train for New York City, so I knit the toes and all on the trip and then was on the foot while we were getting together documents for our trip to the British Consulate in New York. There's a point, as you're merrily knitting around the foot of the sock and it's all beautiful mindless zen knitting, where you have to start the gusset. I already knew where this point was on mokatiki's sock, but I must have been mighty nervous that day, because I passed it at some point while we were in line at the Consulate, and so I forged ahead and made socks with short-row heels for her because I hate to rip socks, don't ever rip socks if I can possibly avoid it. It's because I knit socks very densely (hers were being made on 2.0mm needles), and that makes it hard to get the needle back through live loops when you rip out, and that means you drop lots of stitches and have to have Games and Fun getting them all back on the needles. So anyway, this time I resolved that I would knit the gussets, and I managed to catch gusset point because it happened last week at Sharps when I had materials for sock measuring nearby, so I duly began the gussets and then worried about whether or not I should have, since they added extra bulk on a lace pattern I already had to keep track of. Somehow, I muddled through.
The heel turn on these socks is really simple, but the big drawback to the master-class style book, where she goes through everything step by step with half a dozen photographs, is that there's no quick and dirty set of instructions for people who've done it before. So I found myself flipping through this silly A4 sized book and looking like I was slavishly following a pattern, when in fact all I wanted to do was figure out the way to change the slipstitch pattern while turning the heel. (As
aunty_marion suggested, because she sees the obvious and I do not, I have now made my own quick and dirty cheat sheet and put it on my PDA. Duh!) Anyway, the great thing about this gusset and heel combination method is that you don't actually pick up any stitches to join the gusset to the heel flap: it all comes together by melding stitches together rather than picking them up. I know you have to see this to really get it; just trust me. So when I got to the end of the heel turn, I decided it would look better if I just started the lace pattern at the three-stitch-in marker where I'd started it before, since it would be seamlessly carried on from the pattern on the top of the foot. But then, I got to the end of the round and didn't have enough stitches and counted and counted and couldn't figure it out and figured, oh, well-- I've somehow got five and a half repeats in here or something, there'll just be a jog-- but that wasn't right either, and eight rounds later, after a quick math and proportion discussion with
filceolaire, whose sense of patterning really does come in handy sometimes, I found myself, yes, ripping socks. Aie! It was horrible. I ripped and dropped and ripped and dropped and basically when it was all over I had to sit under a bright light and do a whole round of slip stitches to pick everything up and get all the loops in the right direction and all that.And then we started working on how to fix that pattern. In the end, J came up with something that isn't perfect, but worked. Rather than keeping the perfect checkerboard layout on the back, he figured that since 48 (the number of stitches not in the 36-stitch front lace pattern) was divisible by sixteen, it would be OK if I just narrowed the lace panel on the back by one stitch. And he was right. It's not perfect, but I don't think anyone who isn't looking for it will notice the slight difference in patterning on the back. This morning I completed the about 1" of k2p2 ribbing on the top and cast off with a crochet hook to give it a loose, scalloped edge, and now I'm working on the toe of the second sock, in which I will very carefully have to make exactly the same mistakes as in the first one, except for that whole ripping-out-eight-rounds-after-the-heel-turn thing. Not gonna do that part.
Here's your prize for having read this far: photographs!
Here's a side view, so you can see the (funny-looking but very good-fitting) construction of the sock itself, with bonus look at the just-begun toe of the second sock.
And here's the top of the sock, so you can see how the lace looks. It looks much better when stretched over the foot.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-12-05 05:15 pm (UTC)Strange how the choice of wool can do that to a pattern (or choice of fabric with sewing)
Teddy
no subject
Date: 2005-12-05 05:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-05 05:23 pm (UTC)I'll definately be coming, provided you don't have other plans?) but I still don't know if Tom will since he's come down with another cold while recoverign form the previous one...{pauses to stare at moving speck hand}... and I appear to have greenfly....
Teddy
no subject
Date: 2005-12-05 07:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-06 10:51 am (UTC)So it'll be just me.
What time should I aim to be there and what's the nearest station?
Teddy
no subject
Date: 2005-12-05 05:32 pm (UTC)Some of the lace socks I've done:
http://www.kelthaven.org/socks/images/ciccloverleaf.jpg
http://pics.livejournal.com/celticdragonfly/pic/0007bdb6/g6
http://pics.livejournal.com/celticdragonfly/pic/0008kk7f/g6
and it's not socks, but it's lace
http://pics.livejournal.com/celticdragonfly/pic/00088yd6/g6
I'm working on a lace scarf right now - oddly enough, my first scarf. Dunno if I like it, it's a 3ply laceweight yarn, and the whole thing feels too cobwebby. We'll see how it comes out.
no subject
Date: 2005-12-05 05:38 pm (UTC)If I had the patience (and sufficient skill at following patterns) for knitting I'd do myself a pair of Elizabethan hose in a pattern like one of those.
Teddy
no subject
Date: 2005-12-05 05:43 pm (UTC)I can't remember the last time I made a cuff-down sock. I like the freedom of having the business part of the sock knitted before I'm ever even the least little bit afraid I'll run out of wool!
no subject
Date: 2005-12-05 09:03 pm (UTC)The lace bag was pretty too. Sorta looks like a heart-shaped pattern in the middle, yes?
What effect are you looking for in the scarf? What size needles are you using? What's the fiber content of the yarn? Sometimes things that look very cobwebby can be *VERY* warm...
no subject
Date: 2005-12-06 02:37 am (UTC)The lace bag is from the same book, and yes, a repeating heart shaped pattern. I've done two of those. They're nice.
The scarf - well, the effect I am looking for is to use up this Paton's Kroy 3 ply I ended up with. I agreed to trade sock yarn with someone online - I had ordered a green that when I got it I didn't like the color, and they offered to trade it for rose pink. Turned out they didn't realize I was sending 4 ply sock weight. Don't know why. So they sent me 2 balls of 3 ply laceweight rose, and 2 balls of the same in gray. And they've sat in my stash for ages. The pattern is the Gloriana scarf, the one shown in rust red here http://www.knitpicks.com/books/books_display.aspx?itemid=50356 . Wool blend yarn, size 7 needles. (The pattern calls for 6, IIRC, or maybe it was 5 or 6, and my mom knowing how tight I knit and that I always go up at least one size recommended I start with 7.)
I don't care if it's really warm or not - it'll probably be given to someone in Texas, so it'll be just for pretty.
no subject
Date: 2005-12-06 03:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-06 03:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-05 06:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-05 06:13 pm (UTC)Priscilla Gibson-Roberts' book, Simple Socks, Plain and Fancy, is the sock construction book I recommend to nearly everyone; it teaches that short-row heel I can knit in my sleep and is a very easy one to work with. But even that isn't as easy as the toe-up cast-on you learn in the Queen Kahuna book.
If you want to knit socks in the old-fashioned way, top down, you could do worse than picking up Nancy Bush's book Folk Socks, which talks a lot about sock construction and then offers some beautiful patterns, including a very basic one.
It really all depends on how you like to learn things. Socks, they are addictive, my pretty. ;)
no subject
Date: 2005-12-05 06:35 pm (UTC)I'm working with the Lorna's Laces sheperd's wool right now; it's sooo nice to knit with. Doing a simple Old Shale lace over the top and plain short row heels. Your description makes me want to find the book and try those combination gusset heels.
no subject
Date: 2005-12-05 06:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-06 02:40 am (UTC)My mom started me with the book Socks Soar on Two Circulars. http://tinyurl.com/boddo It did well by me. I started with two circulars, and still like the flexibility of the technique very much for *anything* that's knit (or can be knit) in a tube - socks, sleeves, skirt, etc. But once I got the structure down it was easy to learn on DPNs, too. Now I do it sometimes one way, sometimes the other.
no subject
Date: 2005-12-05 06:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-05 07:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-06 03:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-12 01:31 am (UTC)Right, end of sock natter, off to bed with the harper.