How to Knit Wacky Ankle socks

I finished my wacky ankle socks and I just know you couldn't wait to see them.


All bright and cheerful with their carnival colors and mismatched ankles!


Actually, this was a bit of an experiment. I've been seeking a good sock pattern to use for cycling socks and I think this one will do quite nicely.

If you don't really care about how to knit socks, the rest will likely bore you to tears. Personally, I find sock construction, in it's zillions of variations, quite fascinating. I also do math for fun. I'm weird.

To make my toes up socks I start with a provisional cast-on over the cable of my second circular needle like in this video (the provisional cast on I use is the second of the four she demonstrates):



Then I knit a short row toe similar to the toe in Wendy's generic toe up sock pattern. Both the cast on and the short row toe take some practice. There's a short row toe tutorial on Knitty using a crochet provisional cast on. I don't like the crochet chain cast on, but I found the rest of the tutorial useful.

For the record, I like my socks to be 60 stitches around (on size 1's) so I cast on 30 stitches (plus the 30 on the second needle which hangs out of the way, or sometimes frustratingly in the way, while you make the toe). I knit back one complete row, turn and start my short rows by purling 29, wrap the 30th stitch and turn, knit back to the second to last stitch, wrap the last stitch and turn, etc until there are 14 unwrapped stitches in the middle and 8 wrapped stitches on either end.

Wendy's instructions, both in her pattern and on Knitty start the short rows with a knit row. I found that when I started with a purl row, I ended up picking up the last wrapped stitch on a knit row and could continue strait away in the round. Doing it Wendy's way had me finishing with a purl row, then having to knit back to start the round and for me that left too big of a gap when I moved to the second needle to work in the round and I ended up with little holes on either side of the toe. Perhaps I'm not following Wendy's instructions quit correctly. Not sure. Anyhow, I get holes Wendy's way. You might not.

Once the toes are both finished I arrange them on two circs and start knitting in the round. I did a 2x2 rib on the top of these sock and stockinette stitch on the bottom.

My ginormous feet are 10 inches long (really, I might be the only girl on the planet that dreads shoe shopping) so I start me heel work at 7 inches using the heel from Wendy's toe up socks with a difference. Instead of working gussets on the sides of the heel, this pattern puts the increases under the heel. It ends up looking like a little wedge under your foot. I was a bit skeptical about putting anything other than stockinette stitch under my foot until I tried this. The increases are quite flat and you will not be able to feel them.

Side view:

bottom view:



Then I work back and forth on the heel needle turning the heels with short rows and continuing with the heel flaps as described in the pattern. Once you've figured out the short rows for the toes, the short row heel turn is a piece of cake. I work up the heel flap sucking up stitches on either side as I go. Once all the stitches are worked in and I'm down to just the flap, I still have a few more stitches on the heel needle than the instep needles so I start working in the round again and swallow up those extra stitches as I go.

For these socks I knit 1 1/2 inches of 2x2 rib for the ankle, adding in the mismatched yarn as needed, then bound off in pattern with a number 3 needle.

And there you have it, toes up ankle socks suitable for cycling!

my mismatched socks (oops!)

My new ankle socks started out like this. Two little short-row toes and two little half skeins of very bright yarn. The other half of those two skeins went to knit these bright and cheery little ankle socks last June for my marvelous friend Mary (who now has two blogs). Before I started knitting my own pair of bright and cheerful socks I weighed one of the two half skeins to be sure it really was at least half a skein. The skein I weighed was 25g (exactly half of the original 50g). Good! Of course I had forgotten 3 things. One: I knit Mary's socks on size 2 needles and I'm knitting my socks on size 1 needles. Guess which one uses more yarn. Two: after knitting several pair of socks I've discovered that a bit of ribbing on the instep keeps the feet from getting baggy so I knew I wanted to do that, too. Ribbing tends to use more yarn than stockinette stitch. And finally, three: When I started Mary's socks I discarded a lengthy chunk of yarn from one of the skeins so the patterns in the self patterning yarn would match up. These two half skeins were not the same size. Oblivious to all of these potential pitfalls, I cast on for my bright and cheery ankle socks toes first.

I'm kinda regretting that toes-first choice I made. You see, if I'd started at the ankles, at least the parts of my socks that show above my shoes would match.


One of my little half skeins was smaller than the other and, not surprisingly, I ran out. These are quirky socks to begin with so all is not lost. I simply grabbed the leftover yarn from these socks, joined it in, and kept on knitting. Maybe no one will notice... some of the colors are similar. There's light blue checks and dark blue and a mustardy yellow in both. So what if they're different shades. Who looks that closely at someone else's socks anyhow?

Aw heck, I don't know who I'm trying to fool. If I wear these mismatched socks out of the house everyone is going to know I'm the crazy sock knitting lady. Oh well, that was bound to happen eventually.

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A more thrust, less drag update: 2 more pounds this week for a total of 13 pounds lost. I've got 52 pounds to go. Pass the salad...

Buster got a new hat (also, How to double knit)

I finished knitting Buster's new hat yesterday. It's maroon because he likes that color and dark-gray because that matches his coat. It is NOT scarlet and gray. It is maroon and dark-gray. I would NOT give my husband a scarlet and gray hat any more than I would give him an green and white hat. That would be mean. [If you have no clue what I'm talking about, think college football and repeat after me: "Go Blue!". Ok, that's better.]

I used this pattern by Allison Hansel. sorta...

I made the hat bigger around than the pattern calls for (Buster has a big noggin), and several inches taller than the pattern (Buster likes tall hats), and I used a slightly different knitting method. So... is it still the same pattern? I don't know. Allison can have the credit. I did start out with her pattern.

The hat is "double knit" which means that it's two layers knit simultaneously. If you look closely at the picture above you can see that both the outside of the hat and the folded up brim (the inside of the hat) look like stockinette stitch. That's because they both ARE stockinette stitch. It's two layers with the purl sides together. The hat is reversible. Buster can have a maroon hat with dark-gray stripes or a dark-gray hat with maroon stripes (but he cannot have a scarlet and gray hat -- that's not welcome in this house).

There are a few ways to accomplish this double knitting thing. You could, I suppose, knit one big long tube then fold it in on itself and cinch the ends up, but that would be cheating. And it would look bad. Or you could just knit two stockinette stitch hats and sew them together. That might look a little better but it's still cheating.

If you're really knitting both layers at the same time you end up with the stitches from each layer staggered on your needles. So if the first stitch is from the maroon layer, the next is from the dark-gray layer, then maroon, and so on around.

Alison Hansel's original pattern describes a method where, once you've got the whole thing started, you carry only the maroon yarn for a full round knitting the maroon stitches and slipping each dark-gray stitch with the yarn in front, then drop the maroon and carry the dark-gray yarn, purling into the dark gray stitches and slipping the maroon stitches with the yarn in the back. So, for every row you need to go around the hat twice, handling each stitch twice and constantly moving the yarn back and forth. This seems terribly inefficient to me. And somehow it still feels like cheating.

To double knit in the traditional manner, you carry both yarns at the same time knitting the maroon yarn into the maroon knit stitches and purling the dark-gray yarn into the dark gray purl stitches (until you want to change color). You still have to swing the yarns to the other side of the needles between each stitch, but at least you're making a new stitch each time and not slipping every other stitch to save it for later.

The real catch here, and the reason so many people prefer the knit-slip method, is that holding the two strands at the same time can be awkward and you have to be careful not to cross them. Ideally you want the two layers to be attached only at the edges and the color changes. Every time you accidentally cross the strands you attach the two layers together and the contrasting color may show through especially if one or both colors are particularly bright.

You'll find a great little video showing this method of double knitting here, about two thirds of the way down the page. In the video she knits continental (holding the yarn with her left hand), tensions both yarns over her pinky, and holds the colors over different fingers. I work very similarly but hold both yarns over my index finger and tension them with different fingers to keep them from twisting in my hand. Like I said, either way is a bit awkward and you just have to find what works best for you.

Double knitting is not just for super warm reversible ski caps. You can also make double layer pot holders or cushy baby blankets. And you can even do fancy parlor tricks like knitting two socks at the same time on DPNs (double pointed needles), one inside the other. I don't think I've got enough patience for doing socks this way, but I might do a few colorful pot holders and another hat or two.

Next up, some toes-up socks in frighteningly bright colors and a color-work hat for me out of some very beautiful yarn I just bought from jimmy beans wool. I might try a tubular cast-on for that hat. Should be fun!