Twisted Loops

I’ve been working on the William Street Socks.  It’s a fairly simple cable pattern to remember, and as I suspected in my last post, much easier to complete when using a cable needle.

The pattern is written toe-up.  So, as I reached the end of the cable pattern and began the ribbing for the cuff, my inner knitter knew that the directions couldn’t make sense, but I followed them anyway.  I know that cables pull-in the width of knitting, so logically, the cabled section of the sock should have more stitches than non-cabled sections.  However, when changing from cables to ribbing, the pattern actually calls for increasing stitches.  I did as instructed, and knit until I ran out of yarn.  When I tried on the sock, the ribbing was way too loose.  The ribbed stitches hardly stretched at all.

After a big sigh, I ripped back to the start of the ribbing.  This time, I decreased to eliminate one repeat of the ribbing, and knit the sock to the end.  Again, the inner knitter wondered about the number of stitches on the needle, but I forged ahead.  I knit until I ran out of yarn, and the ribbing is too loose, again.

I should have listened to my inner knitter, the math didn’t make sense.  Typically, for a fingering weight sock, I knit ribbing in the 60-something stitch range.  Why, then, would I want a DK weight sock with 70-stitches in ribbing, as the pattern originally called for?  Was decreasing to 65-stitches really going to solve the problem of the sock being too loose?

I really like the cabled section of this sock, and I determined to make the sock fit.  So off I go to rip out the ribbing again, and this time find a suitable number of stitches.