Had to throw out the first pair of socks that I made. My husband had been wearing them and he likes to keep things ‘plain’. Since the old pair was made with some natural colored wool knit up in an ordinary top down sock pattern, I decided to replace them with something similar. Buachaille is such a nice yarn to work with that even a simple pattern is a pleasure to knit. I had two skeins of Ptarmigan and I was curious to find out if I could make a full pair of socks using only one 50g skein for each sock (2 skeins total). The answer is YES…just barely :)!
The finished sock has a 6.5” leg and a 9.5” foot.
LEG:
Twisted german cast on in 1x1 rib on 2.75mm needles 54 stitches. Knit 9 rows in rib pattern and then switched to 3mm needles and created a faux seam by working 5 stitches as follows:
Row 1: K1 P1, Knit to 3 stitches before EOR P1 K2
Row 2: K1 P1, Knit to 3 stitches before EOR P1 K1 P1
Repeat rows 1 and 2 until leg measures 6.75” from top (including ribbing).
HEEL:
Worked a reinforced Dutch Heel over 24 stitches with a heel flap that measured 2.25” (worked over 28 rows of reinforced stitching, (i.e. RS: s1, k1 s1 to end; WS s1 purl to end) with an 8 stitch turn.
GUSSET:
standard gusset worked over 36 stitches down to 28 on DPNS, then went back to magic loop, moving extra instep stitches back onto the heel needle (instep now 27 stitches) and reducing (still on gusset stitches) to 27 on heel needle.
FOOT:
worked one short row at the end of the gusset and another before starting the toe.
TOE:
worked 6 rows while reducing on pinky-toe side only (front and back mirrored between the two socks) every other row to 23 stitches on each side, then reducing every other row on the big-toe side and every row on the pinky-toe side for a total of 20 rows until 8 stitches remain.