Twisted Loops

I finished the William Street Socks a week or two ago, but I haven’t gotten around to posting about it.  I’ve worn them once, and they’ve been through a washing.

I knit this pair as part of the Ravelry Sock Knitters Anonymous’ February Sockdown challenge.  The challenge for February was to try a new heel.  Since I’m strictly a top-down, heel-flap sock knitter, I tried this pair of toe-up, short-row heel socks.  I think that I’ll stick to top-down heel flaps.  While I like this pair of socks overall, I’m still not sold on the short-row heel.

Pattern: William Street Socks
Designer: Lisa Shroyer
Source: Interweave Knits, Fall 2007
(also available free online from IK)
Yarn: Schachenmayr Regia Tweed 6-Fadig (136 yards/50g)
Quantity: 2 skeins (272 yards/100g)
Color: Gray
Needles: Addi Turbo 3.25mm

Started: February 1, 2008
Completed: March 12, 2008

Pattern modifications:

• I changed the ribbing section of the pattern.  When I knit the ribbing per the pattern, the sock ended up much too loose.  To remedy this, I decreased the last round before the ribbing.  Starting with the cabled section of the sock, I K1, (K3, K2Tog) — this knit together the first and last stitch of each 5 stitch section of cable.  On the back of the sock, I did two decreases, one on each side of the center of the back.  On finishing the round, I slipped the last stitch of the back of the sock to the front needle, and did a P2Tog with the K1 from the cabled section.   This gave me 56-stitches on the needle.  I did P2, K2 ribbing around until I ran out of yarn.
• I used the magic cast-on for toe-up socks from Knitty instead of the specified cast on.
• I only used 2 balls of yarn.  While I wish the socks were a tiny bit longer, the length is acceptable.

Yarn oveview:

I do not knit socks with sport weight yarn very often, so it was interesting when the socks seemed to be progressing very slowly.  As for the yarn, I was surprised by the tweedy-quality of the yarn.  The little tweed bits seemed to be loosely added to the yarn, some even fell out of the yarn as I was knitting the sock.  Most all of the bits that can be seen in the Feb. 8th post on this pair of socks are gone now that they’ve been washed.  Overall, the sock has developed a slight halo of fuzziness from being washed, but otherwise is ok.