February Socks - Basic Sock

February's socks were started and finished with a few days hence the second sock post in the space of a few weeks. I struggled to decide what to do for this month. I wanted to get out one of my treasured hand-dyed yarns and knit the jaywalker again. At the same time I wanted to save that pattern for some sock yarn I have earmarked for my sister. In the end laziness won over. I decided on the only yarn that I had that wouldn't involves sitting winding it.

That meant using the second yarn I picked up when I was in York. I had picked this up because I thought at the time that it was mainly reds. But actually it's mainly pinks. I picked the basic pattern as I wanted to see what the striping effect would be like. I did think that there would be some fair isle in there going by one of the bands of colour but that turned out not to be the case. I'm also not entirely convinced that the yarn really needed that bright coral. However, overall, I'm pleased with the way it knitted up.

I also decided on a short row heel. My reason for doing that was that I wanted the striping of the sock to be continuous. When you do the heel turn and gusset it changes the way the yarn pools due to the fact that you are knitting on a larger area until of course you are back to your original stitch count. I didn't want that. I quite like the way the heel turned out. I like the fact that it has that pool of burgundy at it's centre. Unfortunately it's a little gappy and that's entirely down to my choice of needle size. This sock yarn would have been better suited to the 2.5mm rather than the 2.75mm since there was no pattern to the sock.

You can see from this photo just how luminous the coral is. I'll not lose those socks. I've also begun using my doodlestop project book. Loving it so far. I've started taping in the ballbands from the yarn and attaching some of the yarn just for my own reference.

Here is what this years 'operation sock drawer' looks like so far. It's safe to say that January's socks are my favourite so far.