Sane socks
Apr. 7th, 2026 09:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
baroque_mongooseThere is a thing called Sock Madness on Ravelry; the reason I know about this is because there is a channel dedicated to it on one of my crafts Discord servers, and Best Online Friend said I'd probably enjoy following it. She was right. I'm never going to participate, because I know exactly how I do socks and it doesn't involve a pattern, whereas the whole point of these is that you have one; but I do enjoy watching everyone else losing their minds over when the next pattern is going to drop and then all working the same pair of socks in various different colour combinations. They're almost always interesting patterns, at that. I liked the first one very much; it had a multicoloured grid effect, and you did the narrow vertical lines using surface crochet, which is a very sensible way to do those in knitting but I'd never seen it before. It's high-pressure, time-sensitive, competitive sock-knitting, and therefore as far as I'm concerned it makes a good spectator sport.
I, however, have knitted so many pairs of socks that I pretty much have them off pat now. Cast on 8 stitches on each needle using Judy's Magic Cast-on, which leaves you with a completely smooth toe - no seam, no ridge, no nothing; you can't see where the cast-on happened. Increase at each end of alternate rows till you have 24 on each needle. On the top side of the final plain round, do a (k1, m1) 12 times in the middle of the set of stitches so you have 36 on the top needle. Start the cable pattern on that side on the next round, leaving the sole plain. Keep going till it measures about 21.5 cm. Turn heel using the Fish Lips Kiss method (available from Ravelry). Work another 8 or 10 rounds as before, increasing on the sole side of the last round. Start the cable pattern on the back of the sock on the next round, matching it to that on the front (you need to increase an extra pair of stitches so that the Irish moss stitch at the edges meshes nicely). Continue till you run out of yarn (assuming you're using one of those cakes of Tencel mix that Adelle at Vegan Yarns sells you - otherwise, continue till it's about the right length). Switch to contrast yarn and 2 x 2 rib, suitably decreasing on the first round. Continue till you've almost run out of yarn, then cast off; either use double crochet, or m1/m1p in the middle of each rib section on the round before you cast off. Darn in ends, of which there are not many, and bingo, you have socks. Since they are not and never will be part of the Sock Madness, I have to assume that they are Sane Socks.
I was not planning to speed-test them, but I have two things going on at the moment. The first of these is, of course, my mother's funeral; I'm going to go up for that tomorrow (time still TBA) and return on Friday. I will bring some knitting because I always do, but the thing is, if I'm taking knitting anywhere, it does have to be portable. This is not usually a problem, but now we come to the second factor.
Usually, Adelle's yarn cakes are very well-behaved. There's an end on the surface and an end sticking out from the middle, and you can use them both at the same time, which is how I always knit socks. (If you buy one of the sock kits, she'll wind the main yarn into two balls or cakes rather than just the one, but you can also get the yarn separately so that you can mix and match, and in that case you'll get a single cake, unless you want it as a skein. I don't.) This particular yarn cake, unfortunately, was a bit of a Sibyl. The inner end unwound all right for a few rows of the toe box, and then... wouldn't. I had to take a very deep breath, unwind the entire cake, and then rewind it into a series of small, loosely knotted skeins in order to carry on working with it. So it was do-able, but not portable; and it won't be portable till I've got it down to a certain point, which I should, all being well, reach today.
All of which means I've been going gangbusters on these socks, and it's now looking as though I can, at least in theory, knit a pair in a week, which is about what you need to be able to do for Sock Madness, except that so far they haven't had a heavily cabled pair like mine. After this pair, though, I do intend to ease up a little. By the end of yesterday I had a rather sore arm, following two quite intensive days, in both of which I did about 10 cm (one of them including the heel turns).
The next pair I'm doing is for Porthos. His birthday is in June. I'll be able to take my time over those!
I, however, have knitted so many pairs of socks that I pretty much have them off pat now. Cast on 8 stitches on each needle using Judy's Magic Cast-on, which leaves you with a completely smooth toe - no seam, no ridge, no nothing; you can't see where the cast-on happened. Increase at each end of alternate rows till you have 24 on each needle. On the top side of the final plain round, do a (k1, m1) 12 times in the middle of the set of stitches so you have 36 on the top needle. Start the cable pattern on that side on the next round, leaving the sole plain. Keep going till it measures about 21.5 cm. Turn heel using the Fish Lips Kiss method (available from Ravelry). Work another 8 or 10 rounds as before, increasing on the sole side of the last round. Start the cable pattern on the back of the sock on the next round, matching it to that on the front (you need to increase an extra pair of stitches so that the Irish moss stitch at the edges meshes nicely). Continue till you run out of yarn (assuming you're using one of those cakes of Tencel mix that Adelle at Vegan Yarns sells you - otherwise, continue till it's about the right length). Switch to contrast yarn and 2 x 2 rib, suitably decreasing on the first round. Continue till you've almost run out of yarn, then cast off; either use double crochet, or m1/m1p in the middle of each rib section on the round before you cast off. Darn in ends, of which there are not many, and bingo, you have socks. Since they are not and never will be part of the Sock Madness, I have to assume that they are Sane Socks.
I was not planning to speed-test them, but I have two things going on at the moment. The first of these is, of course, my mother's funeral; I'm going to go up for that tomorrow (time still TBA) and return on Friday. I will bring some knitting because I always do, but the thing is, if I'm taking knitting anywhere, it does have to be portable. This is not usually a problem, but now we come to the second factor.
Usually, Adelle's yarn cakes are very well-behaved. There's an end on the surface and an end sticking out from the middle, and you can use them both at the same time, which is how I always knit socks. (If you buy one of the sock kits, she'll wind the main yarn into two balls or cakes rather than just the one, but you can also get the yarn separately so that you can mix and match, and in that case you'll get a single cake, unless you want it as a skein. I don't.) This particular yarn cake, unfortunately, was a bit of a Sibyl. The inner end unwound all right for a few rows of the toe box, and then... wouldn't. I had to take a very deep breath, unwind the entire cake, and then rewind it into a series of small, loosely knotted skeins in order to carry on working with it. So it was do-able, but not portable; and it won't be portable till I've got it down to a certain point, which I should, all being well, reach today.
All of which means I've been going gangbusters on these socks, and it's now looking as though I can, at least in theory, knit a pair in a week, which is about what you need to be able to do for Sock Madness, except that so far they haven't had a heavily cabled pair like mine. After this pair, though, I do intend to ease up a little. By the end of yesterday I had a rather sore arm, following two quite intensive days, in both of which I did about 10 cm (one of them including the heel turns).
The next pair I'm doing is for Porthos. His birthday is in June. I'll be able to take my time over those!
