Fyrestorm's Brainstorms

My first foray into sock land

Well, the time came, I ran out of excuses and this yarn had been teasing me long enough.  I took a deep breath, shut myself up in a closet with a pattern, my computer (for youtube tutorials), a D hook, my yarn - which I'll get into later and a pair of scissors.  It was time to suck it up and try a pair of socks.

The yarn - 2 years ago, I was gifted with a 370 yard hank of hand painted, 100% merino wool called Lollipop Guild by Sunshine Yarns.  She has some amazing stuff in all colors and weights.  The yarn I was gifted is superfine fingering weight, the kind used for socks.  I loved it - touched it just about every day and dreamed of the day I would have a pair of socks made from this skein of dreamyness.  Yesterday, I decided it was time.  These socks were not going to make themselves.  I can crochet (I can even knit if I have to) but the yarn couldn't do it by itself...so....

The fear - HEELS!  They look impossible and patterns for them read like a foreign language to me.  Quite frankly, they scare me to death.  So I searched the internet, I searched You Tube and finally found a video that deciphered the cryptography that is sock heels.  Who knew that the heels would be the least of my troubles.

The Toe - I first picked up an old skein of baby yarn from my stash and tried out a practice sock...the heel was pretty straight forward, but I really didn't like the toe.  It was sort of triangular and looked weird.  So I had the brilliant idea that I would try to figure out a better way to do it - 4 hours later, I picked up the good stuff and went back to the original plan.  I crocheted and frogged about 100 times before finally giving up and going with the tried and true.  It was also pointed out that once it's on, it shapes to your foot and doesn't look triangular and funky.

The Foot - this was without a doubt the easiest part...25 rounds of 45 extended single crochets

Back to the Heel - First you decrease...

Then you increase and join to the row below - it's called 'turning the heel'

The Cuff -  I couldn't figure out how it was going to end up not having a divot where the sole and heel join, but as I worked the cuff - it just sort of went away.  If anyone can explain the physics behind that, I would love to hear it.

The hard part here was figuring out the math - damn my math teacher who swore I would actually need that crap in real life!  I wanted to do a cable pattern ending in a rib at the top and had to figure out how to spread it evenly over the stitches I had to work with.  Graphs, Charts and a calculator later, I think it ended up pretty close.

so...the finished product still looked a bit angular, and maybe a bit odd sized...

But, once it was on my foot, it was the sock I had always dreamed of.

Now...do you think I can duplicate it or will my other foot just be cold forever?