Tuesday, September 3, 2013

Japanese Socks: A new adventure

Greetings,

I know it has been almost 6 months since my last post but they went by so fast.  Working 12 hours shifts has been an adjustment to say the least.  I am currently working a night shift and loving it (6 pm-6 am).  I never thought I would like nights but I really do.  I can see this being beneficial for my schooling future.  However, while I finish training I am delighted to get some knitting in.  I found this amazing book on Amazon about Japanese knitting techniques.  There are 30 patterns and I plan on blogging their progress here.

Most of these socks will end up going to Jessie bc she is my muse for this book however I may keep some for myself.  I love the colorway for this first pair of socks and even though it is Red Heart there is no acrylic in it!!!

The socks I am starting with are called Konnichiwa which is "good day" in Japanese.  This sock starts with a somewhat unique pattern (at least for me) for the ribbing on the cuff. It is still a combination of knitting and purling but they overlap in parts.  Its pretty to look at (as you can see in the pic) but I'm not completely sure about how stretchy it is.  It could just be that I cast on a little tight, but  it still fits up my forearm so we should be good.  The main pattern consists of what the author is calling a right/left twist slip.  It will be interesting to learn the nuances of this stitch.

Modifications
I want to use these posts to also document my modifications so I don't have to keep guessing on the second sock as to what I did on the first one :-).  I will probably switch to two socks at a time at some point when I can buy new needles.  So far I am using size 2 needles and I cast on 60 stitches as opposed to the size 6 and 40 stitches it calls for.  I am not always good at doing my own mods so I especially for this one I am relying on Airynia from Ravelry to help me.

On a side note, I have always knit my socks with size 2 needles.  No matter what the pattern I have been able to make that work.  I don't know if that is normal for everyone to use the same size, but I don't know what I would do if I had to use different sizes.  I guess I need to go back through my sock history and see if I made a lot of mods to numbers of stitches to make the pattern work.  Hmm.....

Well, that is all I have to say for now so I am signing off.  Below is the pic of the cuff (I need to knit 5 more rows before I start the main pattern.)

Eileen
Purling Kitty

1 comment:

Jessica said...

I like that you changed your avatar!