Glacier Lake Sock Revealed

Glacier Lake Sock #1
Originally uploaded by sunasak

I'd intended to post a picture of this sock in progress, but it went so quickly that instead, here's the first completed sock!

This sock is 65 stitches around on the leg in a K3, P2 pattern with every fifth row purled. The resulting lines remind me of the trees in the image that inspired the colorway, which was a bunch of tree stumps in a lake near a glacier.

It was made toe up with a backwards loop cast-on. The backwards loop cast on, when done carefully, looks as nice as fancier ones. My tension came out very good and the stitches are not twisted--it's a beautiful sock beginning (will photograph it later). All you do is cast on the number of stitches you want (I used 14) on a spare double pointed needle, then pick up the same number in the loops in the back of the cast-on using your circular needle, being careful to pick up in such a way that the stitches don't get a twist. If you end up one stitch off, you can M1 extra in the next row. I then knit a row, which lets you get rid of the extra needle and start increasing on every other row after that (on this one, I did a M1 after the first and before the last stitch on a needle half, but sometimes I use a lifted increase).

I used lifted increases on the edges gusset, which makes a very neat effect--the new stitches just seem to grow out of the sock. I used the same heel that I liked so much in the Coupling socks, though I made it a bit bigger because I had more stitches. I was very proud that I figured out how to do it on that rather complex set of heel instructions. Let's see if I can make one to match. If so, I can write it up and share.

The light is bad because I was in a hurry to leave for work--a better picture and pattern close-up will come when there are TWO socks.

The yarn is from Ray at Knitivity.com and is a sock-weight merino. It's very soft, light and NOT bulky--a lovely switch from the Monkey socks! These are the kind of socks you can wear every day, and the pattern looks nice with the hand-painted yarn, really breaking up the colors even more. And this one didn't do much pooling, which makes it more uniform.

I had intended to do some fancy ending, like a crenelated one, or picot, or a lacy thing, but everything I tried distracted from the coordination of the pattern and yarn, so I just bound off loosely. Sophisticated, yes!