Vacation Knitting for the trip to Michigan -- 6/30 through 7/6/11.

I had a million and one problems with gauge on this sock, as per usual with me. After false starts with three different hooks on each size of the sock, I opted to make a size small with a C hook with the recommended-for-the-pattern yarn, and still wound up with a slightly larger than called for gauge.

I modified the pattern to increase the foot length for myself; in the last set of rows on the Arch increase -- I added an extra repeat of rows 2 and 3 before the last increase. If the rows in that section were consistently numbered in the pattern, it would be easy to note that I added those as rows 22 and 23, before row 24 (the final increase), and completed the section prior to the size-specific rows with 25 rows crocheted for the arch.

The lack of row numbering was irritating, but I also found the complete lack of construction notation very confusing. These socks are joined for working in the round, but after each join you turn the work and work the next row in the opposite direction. The construction provides a terrifically squishy sole of the sock and a very even lace section free from the bias slant of ordinary crochet -- but there is no mention within the pattern itself, or in the introduction or the notes to indicate how or why that’s useful and necessary.

A small chart for the lace pattern was given, but frankly it would have been more helpful to me if the toe section was charted; the increases are worked entirely contingent upon proper positioning of markers as the first step of the work, but instructions for their placement is all relative, with no absolute instruction given. Combined with the lack of instruction about the “join in the round and then turn” construction, I found the pattern very difficult to begin smoothly.

As pretty as the socks are, and as excited as I am to wear them, I don’t recommend the pattern.