Purple Paraphernalia Socks

Try saying that 10 times fast. 

 

These socks were a Christmas gift for my boss. She was one of the gift recipients that were warned that their gifts would be post-Christmas. I know I had all sorts of wonderful ideas about finishing all my gift knitting by Christmas Eve but sometimes you (meaning me) just need to face facts, call a spade a spade, and come to terms with what is not going to happen. A pair of socks in only 4 days? I'm not quite at that level of speed knitting just yet.

 

I chose this pattern because I really like the cable pattern in these socks (and my boss loves knitted cables). It's not too cabley, you know, where you're doing like 10 cables every round. Being a pretty new sock knitter, I don't quite have the patience for that yet. Since these were a gift, I wanted to make sure that the cuff would be stretchy enough so of course I asked Amy, my sock guru. She suggested a German cast-on which turned out to be perfectly stretchy. I love it. It's going to be my new go-to sock cuff cast-on. 

 

This was also my first time working with Knit Picks Essential sock yarn. Each ball comes as 50 grams. One sock took only about 35 grams so I was able to knit both socks with less than one and a half balls of yarn (and I knit these for a size 7 1/2 shoe).  Was there anything bad about making these socks? Well, I'm not used to using size 1 needles just yet and the cabling did make certain parts a bit tight to knit. Also, the toe as written in the pattern came out kind of square. It instructs to do decreases every other row until you have 12 stitches on each needle. I decreased to 10 stitches and then blocked the heck out of the toe. Otherwise, I'd definitely consider making these again (only for myself this time!).

 

Pattern: Paraphernalia by Taina Anttila

Yarn: Knit Picks Essential Solids in African Violet (70g total)

Needles: #1 using magic loop

Began: December 19

Completed: December 26

Ravelry Link