Tag Archives: Evening Socks for a Young Lady

Socks, socks, and more socks

I promised some knitting, so here goes! First FO catchup post is all about the socks. I only finished five pairs for myself since late 2012 and don’t have too much to say about all of them, so let’s just tackle them all in one post, shall we? In order of completion:

Evening Socks for a Young Lady

Pattern: Evening Stockings for a Young Lady by Nancy Bush
Yarn: Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Sock in Navy
Needles: US0 / 2.0mm ChiaoGoo steel circular

I had neither enough yarn nor any desire to make long socks, so I just made these my preferred length in the leg, omitted the calf shaping (not that there would have been enough for me anyway), and kept the stitch pattern all around.

Sunstone

Yarn: Blue Moon Fiber Arts Silkie Socks that Rock in Sunstone
Needles: US0 / 2.00mm ChiaoGoo steel circular

No pattern. Basic top down sock, using 1×1 rib for the the cuff and 3×1 rib for the rest of the leg and the top of the foot.

Mingus

Pattern: Mingus by Cookie A
Yarn: Socks that Rock Lightweight in Aquaboy
Needles: US0 / 2.0mm Hiya Hiya steel circular

Other than making this shorter, I knit this pretty much as written. Took a while since it required more active attention than a lot of my other projects at the time (no matter how I tried I just could not memorize that chart) but I think it was worth it. I really love the result!

Plain Jane

Yarn: Handmaiden Casbah Sock in Midnight
Needles: US0 / 2.0mm Hiya Hiya steel circular

Believe it or not, I hadn’t knit a plain old stockinette sock since 2005. But this yarn didn’t really want to be anything else; the colorway wasn’t playing nicely with any of the other stitch patterns I tried. It’s just as well, I really like how these turned out! They’re way better than those first plain socks I ever made, but that’s the power of experience for you.

Angee

Pattern: Angee by Cookie A
Yarn: Elann Sock It To Me 4-Ply in color 7725
Needles: US0 / 2.0mm Hiya Hiya steel circular

Another Cookie A pattern, which I found more intuitive than Mingus. I made a tiny error in one of the feet (thankfully not visible in this photo) that I didn’t notice until, oh, six months later? Oh well. No way I’m ripping it back and fixing it now. It was great to finally use this yarn for something – I’d bought it very early on in my knitting life and it was the only yarn I had in my stash thin enough to actually use on socks for myself with this many stitches around, so it was basically the perfect match. I didn’t love working with it (and couldn’t get more if I tried anyway), but it’s standing up well to wear.

So those are all the socks I made for myself and hadn’t yet documented. There’s still a few more projects to share… but not today. Soon, though.

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Change of plans

Installment #5 of my self-imposed sock club was supposed to be Cablenet by Ariel Barton, in Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Sock. However, I got one repeat in before I realized that this wasn’t my best yarn-to-pattern match ever.

It’s actually even less visible in person than it is in this photo. Which is kind of baffling, seeing as I’m actually using the yarn called for in the pattern. But somehow, the cabling doesn’t show up as well here as it does in the sample. Maybe it’s because of the color? I’m using a darker shade, after all.

So as I saw it, my options with this yarn were:

1. Keep knitting Cablenet anyway.
2. Knit Cablenet, but twist all the knit stitches.
3. Knit a completely different pattern.

I decided against #1 because, well, it’s an awful lot of work for a not-clearly-visible pattern! It’s not like, say, Spey Valley, where the pattern got slightly lost in spots but wasn’t much effort to actually knit.

I seriously considered #2. But then I remembered I just knit two sock patterns with twisted stitches in a row. And, I’d really like to knit this pattern as is someday – just with a different yarn, one that better shows off tiny cables.

Which left option 3:

I’m now knitting Evening Stockings for a Young Lady, from Knitting Vintage Socks. Which I’m going to shorten, because I’m pretty sure I don’t have enough of this yarn for knee socks. Ahh, much better!

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