Here are my final two pairs of socks for the 2011 “Super Special Six Pattern Sock Club”! First up are the Nanner Socks from wendy knits. These were knitted at the same time on a pair of 2.75mm circular needles. The wool is Knitabulous Yarn Ultimate Sock in “Sorbet”. If my socks look weird to you compared to the pattern photo, it’s because I knitted them incorrectly. I only discovered it when my friends at Sewjourn noticed the difference. It turns out that I had followed the charts exactly… and missed the bit of text that explained how you were to insert a row of plain knitting every other row. Oops. So my lace scallop repeats are only half as high as they should be. My only planned modification was to gradually add in an extra repeat on the leg portion, just to give a bit more room in the cuff. That worked out pretty well! My complaint about these socks is that they bias and twist really badly. I’m not sure whether that’s due to the pattern or due to my error in knitting them. More photos are available over on Ravelry.

These are the Boyfriend Socks from slippedstitch, which I only finished last night. They were knitted toe-up one-at-a-time on a pair of 2.75mm circular needles. The wool is Regia Design Line Kaffe Fassett. The photos aren’t very colour-accurate; the green is a lot stronger in person. (This is probably my least favourite of the Kaffe Fassett colourways.) The pattern is interesting. From the photos I thought that the cables actually travelled, but they don’t. Instead when the pattern repeat ends, some knits become purls and vice versa. It’s weird at first, but you get used to it. I eventually had it memorised. I used Judy’s Magic Cast-On for the toe and knitted the heel as written in the pattern. I knitted 3.5 repeats of the cables, then did a couple P2tog so that it turned nicely into K2P2 ribbing. Then I just ribbed til I ran out of wool. They fit the Snook nicely. Again, more photos over on Ravelry.

And that’s it! Six pairs of socks done for 2011. I didn’t do any substitutions; I knitted all the socks as set out a year ago: Shur-tugal, Nutkin, Leyburn, Fox Faces, Nanners, and Boyfriend. I also used up quite a bit of sock yarn from stash, which is always welcome. Yay!

These are the fourth socks in the 2011 “Super Special Six Pattern Sock Club.” I’ve caught up! After the stupid Nutkins knocked me two months behind schedule, I’ve finally caught back up to everyone else. These Fox Faces Socks by Nancy Bush were a very quick knit for me, and I’m pleased with how they turned out. The wool is Knitabulous‘s “Ultimate Sock” (which I think has been discontinued) in a beautiful faded pinky-red. I knitted both socks at the same time on a pair of 60cm 2.75mm circular needles. I followed the pattern pretty much *exactly*, which is like a record for me. (I did do one extra repeat on the leg though to add some length.) The toe is a weird one, with three sets of equally spaced decreases rather than the usual two. I actually like how it looks on the top of the sock, with two of the decrease bands emerging perfectly from two of the lace columns. I’m not sure how the third band will wear on the bottom of the foot, but I guess we’ll see. These actually turned out a tiny bit short for me, and I couldn’t be bothered frogging to make them longer. (I was running out of wool too.) So these lovely socks will shortly be winging their way to Chicago to grace the feet of my awesome cousin. She hooks us up with episodes of True Blood; I knit her some socks. It’s a good system.

As usual, more photos and details over on Ravelry…

These are the third socks in the 2011 “Super Special Six Pattern Sock Club.” I’m catching up! My sock knitting mojo has returned, it seems. These were knitted out of the Regia Landscape 4Ply sock wool designed by famous textile artist Kaffe Fassett. (It’s discontinued now, but I bought up a fair bit of it while I could.) I knitted them both at the same time on two 2.75mm circular needles. I modified the pattern quite a bit though. For the toe, I used Judy’s Magic Cast On. I actually knitted the heel three times. The first time I did a short row heel, but it was too short when the Snook tried them on. Then I tried this toe-up heel flap but found the gusset wasn’t quite deep enough. So I frogged it back and did the heel flap one more time, increasing several more times to make the heel deeper. That did the trick! I was so pleased with the heel that I forgot I was meant to do some increases afterwards, so I ended up having to do several increases all at once when I started the pattern on the bag of the leg. (I don’t think you can tell though.) I didn’t do any decreases for the cuff; I just switched to a 2×2 rib and knitted til I used up all the wool. (More photos and details over on Ravelry.)

Nutkin Socks
These are the second socks in the 2011 “Super Special Six Pattern Sock Club”… and I’m officially two months behind schedule. Yikes. These suckers just sucked all my will to knit. I HATED them! I knitted them on a pair of 2.75mm circular needles with Lang Jawoll Magic. The combination of pattern and wool just drove me nuts. The folded cuff was incredibly difficult to do, especially in such a dark yarn. (I ended up doing a provisional cast-on in a lighter yarn so I could see what I was doing.) I added in an extra 8 stitches to each sock (in the purl sections), and I still can barely get them over my ankles. They twist badly. The wool gets very fuzzy. I followed the pattern for the heel, but I just did a traditional decrease and graft for the toe. But whatever, they’re done now and they’re not too ugly. I’ll get some use out of them. Now onto the Leyburns! (More details over on Ravelry.)