Birthday Socks

January & February are big birthday months on my calendar - almost every day for both months I know someone who is having a birthday.  Sometimes I know more than one person on a particular day.  Very few people get birthday socks, however.  That's because I am so fried from Christmas and because Facebook makes it easy for me to zip off a quick post and call it done.  I had three pairs go out in the first 34 days of 2013 - a pair of socks for my mother (Jan. 2), my toddler cousin M (Jan. 4) and M's big sister A (Feb 3.)  That's a lot of socks in a short time span.  Of course, I only remembered to photograph my mother's:

Accurate color of the socks, but no visible pattern

Hello, Vorticity!

This is the Vorticity pattern that I have used on my own socks & the pair I did for my MIL for her birthday back in November.  The original book pattern uses a darker colorway for the socks than I had previously used, and is very simliar to the yarn I chose for this (Regia Blitz Color - gray) so I was happy to see that the pattern still shows well.  Of course the Sock Mon....I mean, Mom, loves the socks.  She keeps raving about how warm they are.  Which they are, but that's the yarn, not the pattern.  My pair is made out of a bamboo/rayon blend, and they are as cool and breezy as a fan blowing on your feet.  Not really, but that paints a nice picture, doesn't it?

Currently on the needles are socks for Goddaughter E's birthday, March 21.  I picked a Lorna's Laces hand-dyed yarn in Girly Stripe, which I though would make thicker bands of color, but instead does alternating pink and purple stripes by row:

I am using Classic Socks for the Family as the pattern, which is what I use for all the childrens' socks I make.  I like variegated yarns (as do the kids - "Look ma, wild socks!") so I don't put the effort in of following a chart for a sock pattern because they are going to outgrow whatever I make them anyway.  I do hope the socks are being saved somewhere, or handed down to another family, because it would kill me to think they were just being tossed when they didn't fit.  (If anyone is doing that, stop it.  You're killing me.)

Can I just tell you how much my wrists ache these days?  And how sick I am of socks?  And yet there are more to come.  I am going to switch everyone over to woven throws.  Bet that will be real popular with the kids.

Done!

I was so excited to finish these socks.  When I cast them off the needles, I heard this in my head, I was so happy to be finished:

The pattern is totally amazing, but each sock took eons and for the first time in my life, I developed Second Sock Syndrome.  Possibly because I had to restart the first sock three times, and then on the second I had to rip back 25 rows to the heel, due to a mistake I made in the gusset.  After all my years of knitting, this was the first time I had ever tried to follow a chart.  I need more practice, clearly.

I persevered, though, and they're ready to go:

It's a shame that it's now over 90 degrees with 70% humidity in New England.  I have them sitting on a chair in my bedroom rather than in a drawer so I can admire them daily.  My husband leaves his store-bought socks out on top of his dresser all the time, so what's one pair on the chair?  I like them even more now that they've been cast off the needles.  And now, onto the next  project!

Third Time IS the Charm!

I am pleased to say that I appear to be smarter than a sock knitting chart - I have finished one sock of the Vorticity pattern from Alice Yu's Socktopus - but not without significant help from the internet.  That chart VEXED me, until I found the Ravelry group and the errata page done by Ms. Yu herself.  I noticed that I pop up pretty high in the results when you do a Google search about the Vorticity pattern and problems, so for those of you who are just here to gawk at what I'm making, you can skip ahead to the pretty photos at the bottom.  For those of you in a vexed state about your own version of the Vorticity sock, read on.

First off, read the chart left to right, starting at the bottom right corner and working left, then up.  In the book, the leg chart (p. 88 in the U.S. version) is properly numbered - there are 21 rows, and the numbers are right next to the appropriate row (they are not for the instep chart, but more on that in a minute.)  The stitches for the rows repeat until you get to the last 10 or so stitches.  At row 11, you knit three, then knit 2 together, and that is the end of that row.  Place a stitch marker, mark your paper (or whatever you do to keep track of where you are in the pattern), and immediately start row 12.  (This is where I went wrong the first two times I started.)  Row 12 is knit normally, and the last stitches of that row are the ones that were the four stitches that made up all of row 11.  Continue on with the chart.  When you get to row 19, you don't knit the last 4 stitches.  Those 4 stitches become the start of row 20.  The shifting stitches help contribute to that lovely rippled pattern.

The heel, heel turn and gusset were all pretty straightforward.  As I was knitting, I was thinking, "Hmm, I wonder if this pattern will feel strange on the bottom of the foot of the sock?"  Turns out, you don't do the pattern on the bottom of the sock.  After you knit the heel, and as you start the gusset, you use a stitch marker to establish the instep portion of the sock, and that's the only part that gets the pattern - the rest of the stitches are straight knitting, leaving a smooth sole on the sock.

When using the instep chart, you'll notice that there are 21 rows, which is not accurate - there are only 20.  Alice Yu explained on Ravelry that the printer's typesetting caused the numbering to be off from the actual rows.  I re-numbered the rows, starting at row 3 (where they start to go off-center of the row) so that my pattern chart has the correct number of 20 rows.  (I put my knitting down and pick it up often and tend to knit in the morning on the train, before my second cup of coffee.  I need every crutch and clear set of directions I can get my hands on.)  Knit the instep pattern for only the stitches found on the instep needle, and then straight knit the remainder of the row.  The instep chart doesn't have the same stitch-shift that the leg chart does, so I found it a little easier, and it was smooth sailing right through the toe decreases and binding off (I used the Kitchner stitch to close the toe.)

I cannot wait to wear these socks.  Too bad it's summer, and I'll have to wait a few more weeks.