Sunday, January 08, 2012

Love in Stitches

Sometime last year I started a pair of socks for Oscar. I found a pattern I liked the looks of from knitspot. Anne Hansen is a designer I admire, and one of my favorite ways to learn my craft is to knit patterns written by admirable designers :-}.
So I bought the Cinder Block Sock pattern and cast on with some lovely alpaca-blend Imagination yarn from Knit Picks in the color called 'Looking Glass'.
I knit them from the top down as the pattern specified and was about half finished with the second of the pair when I had Oscar try on the first one. I wanted to be certain it fit well in the foot before I got much further on sock number 2. It fit perfectly. In the foot. But although the circumference was fine, it didn't reach very far up his legs at all. Oscar had brawny Scots-Norwegian calves as big around as kindergartner's head. The extra width seems to eat up the length and because he gets cramps in cold weather, he really wants knee socks. 
Now remember, these were constructed from the top down so I couldn't just unravel the ribbing and add more leg. (Knitting unravels from the most recent stitches back to the earlier stitches, but not the other direction.)
I finished the rest of the foot on sock number 2, then took a pair of very sharp scissors and carefully cut off the ribbing along the first row below it on each sock. 
Then I picked up all those loops with my double pointed needles, and making a slight adjustment to rejigger the stitches so they appeared to be right above the rows below them I proceeded to knit upwards. I worked an additional 4 repeats of the pattern stitch and when Oscar tried them on (the still-live leg stitches held on a long cable) it became clear I needed another 4 repetitions to make it up high enough to suit us.
Each round is 84 stitches. Each repetition is 8 rounds, so I will have added 64 new rounds (or an additional  5,376 stitches) to each sock, plus reworking the ribbing by the time I finish them.  I am approaching the ribbing on Sock 1, and the stitch pattern is engaging enough I am actually looking forward to those extra 4 rounds (plus ribbing) on Sock 2.
Now that, my friends, is love.


P.S. Thank you all for the kind words and warm prayers for my friend. She of course is having a difficult time but when I told her my friends and blog-readers were thinking of her, she felt very comforted.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have never been brave enough to calculate the stitches in even a small pair of socks for me -- I fear if I knew, I wouldn't knit them! :)

AlisonH said...

Knitting socks at all is pure love. Those added extra!

Don Meyer said...

If you think I'm going to comment on knitting, think again.

Ria said...

Wow! I only knit socks for myself and the Angie - /curt adamantly doesn't want any - he doesn't know what he's missing / - and we both wear shortie below the ankle socks - so I could probably make us each 2 pair with that much knitting!

Kym said...

Now that's commitment! :-)