my achilles heel! knee-high colorwork socks… i must have them! flipping the pattern to work toe-up, and 2aat, of course - i’m not set in my ways or anything (;

isle of skye skein was a gift from my mom, and the limestone was a special treat for myself… trying to remind myself that the yarn i hold below is the dominant color. and then also trying to decide whether i want to swap dominance for the back of leg/bottom of foot? among the many exciting things i did, i held the blue dominant for the roses but white dominant for the spots… i can tell… i swear i’m not a crazy person though it can sometimes feel like it when i’m trying to tell non-knitters about why this is important /:

roses in blue, remembering loves lost
ground cloaked in white, celebrating loves’ lives

to keep my eyes occupied before casting on, isle of skye FOs

ok so here’s what i did!

i read the entire pattern, decided how i was going to progress from one chart to he next, and decided that my happy stitch count (given colorwork in sockweight on these needles) is 64sts. so i made the charts agree with that, and analyzed the options for a toe-up cast on & then made the charts kind of work in my favor for that, too (for jmco i usually use 12 to 14 sts per needle, so i just started further up on a toebox chart)

once i’d started, it was fairly straight forward until i got to the heel. i debated using a mini gusset & short row heel (similar to the one i borrowed in my talbot socks) but in the end i…. just decided not to, for various reasons. then i attempted a short row heel several times before finally conceding that it was never going to work out satisfactorily. so that left me with an afterthought heel like the pattern uses, unfortunately i dislike afterthought heels for several reasons and decided to do something creative! (and oh, how i looked on it with trepidation every step of the way!) when i got to the point i wanted to start the heel, i knit across those stitches with waste yarn. and then worked back across binding off the waste yarn. at the end/beginning, i chained a few stitches, then used a crochet provisional cast on & then worked back across those stitches to be back where my working yarn started, chained a few more & stuck a stitch holder through the last loop, and then continued on in pattern. so… a placeholder for my heel, just not closed up so i could continue to try it on as i went!

then again, delightfully straight forward until the calf increases, which i started when i normally would for any custom knee-high socks specific to my legs, and decided to use cat bordhi’s la-link & la-rink increases. they look alright. not quite so tidy as it might be as decreases had i worked cuff-down, but still not something anyone will ever probably notice or care about except me (;

it did get tricky when i’d realized i would complete the front leg chart before i finished the calf shaping chart… but i just counted up my remaining rows & found a suitable stretch of chart to work on otherwise.

for the elastic casing, i’d decided not to do single color ribbing & instead worked 1 round even in solid CC to make it easy on myself when grafting it closed, and then adjusted the stitch count slightly to accommodate the spots pattern repeat. 8 rounds in pattern, then purled a round in pattern (may very well have been the worst bit of the whole process, actually - two color purling in pattern… sheesh!) then another 7 rounds in pattern (so when folded on the purl line, it appears as 8 rounds & matches the outter portion) i gave everything a gentle steam on my blockers to get things organized, grafted closed around 11¾ inches of ⅝ths inch elastic, broke the yarn & wove in ends!

ohhhshoot, but then i still had the heels. bugger. one of the many reasons i prefer the toe-up sock is that when i finish at the cuff, i’m Done… not so this time. i picked up my stitches, removed waste yarn, and worked an afterthought heel as per pattern. grafted with one color & duplicate stitched on the second! worked like a charm.

huzzah!

589 yards
hpkchc winter2014 arithmancy
graded … 34 bonus points!!
(that yardage extra credit is where it's At!!)