First Pair of Toe Up Socks

So here are my purple rose socks. They fit fairly nicely, but I don't think I'm a toe up convert. I ended up modifying this pattern to fit my design desires and my foot shaping. I seem to do that a lot with Wendy Knits socks designs. I love her designs but I can't seem to help myself from tweaking them just a little bit (or sometimes a lot to better suit my needs.)


Here is a close up of the heel. I realized after I had totally completed it that I still have the same two lines, but the one up the back of the heel isn't as straight as normal. This is because the heel shaping I would normally do for the bottom of the foot, ends up on the back of the heel in this pattern. As it was I ended up having to start the gusset for the foot at 3.5 inches instead of the 2.25 inches the pattern called for. This meant that after every M1 round, I did two straight stitch rounds to get enough rows in before I hit my total gusset count. It also meant I had to change the other half of the heel shaping using fewer stitches to begin with on the heel shaping, to ultimately create enough length in the heels.


My final change to the pattern was the fact I made a two inch 1x1 ribbing versus the one inch it called for. I still don't think there was enough ribbing to hold the sock up, but I was trying to follow the pattern.

Note: The picture about makes it appear that the design goes down the side of the foot, but I've actually turned the sock sideways on the sock blocker to better show the pattern.

I will say I do like working with the Hand Maiden Casbah sock yarn. It's 81% merino, 9% cashmere, and 10% acrylic. Although it's labeled as fingering weight, it's heavier than most fingering weight yarn I knit with. The one downfall might be my ankles. I wore the socks for an hour this morning and my ankles itched most of the time. Not as badly as with other yarn, but enough to notice. I'm going to try washing them to see if it helps. If not, I'll be gifting them to someone else because I can't handle my ankles itching.

-Myrtle, who is hoping the ground starts drying outside over the next several days so I can finish planting in my garden.