Pattern Review: Solewarming Socks
The first pattern I bought from Sockvent 2019 was the Solewarming Socks by Handmade Closet. I had been waiting for something that wasn’t lace-y. As a bonus, I realized after buying it that this is a DK sock, yay for knitting up fast!
This pattern is also advertised as a good way to use up some leftover yarn. I spent a bunch of time sitting on the floor in my “library/yarn store” with all my DK spread out in front of me. I used a technique I learned from Aroha Knits for choosing colours for colourwork – which is to take a photo and then change the colours to black and white so you can see how much contrast there actually is between colours. So using that, plus what I actually liked together, I landed on the scraps from 3 test knits for Nicole of Woolfield Studio – Moonstone Mitts, Shag Carpet Shorties, and English Garden Socks.
I’ve done some colourwork on hats before, but this was sort of my first attempt on socks (aside from my first Night Walk sock, stay tuned). I learned from that sock that going up a needle size for colourwork is very important, which luckily this pattern does specify once past the ribbing and bobbles. The first colourwork chart for my first sock was looking very uneven.
After posting that picture the most common recommendation I got was to knit inside out, which was actually the way I originally knit on dpns! Since this allows you to see the floats more easily, you can even out the tension for each float so there’s less variation. It also adds a little bit of length to the float, which can help if your floats are generally too tight. I think it did help, so I did that for both charts on sock number two.
You’ll notice that sock two is different from sock one. I realized there was a chance I wouldn’t have enough of the pink to make an identical second sock, so I switched the burgundy and pink, so now they’re perfectly mis-matched.
The other technique in this sock is bobbles. I did my first bobbles with the Orchard Spice Socks and was unsure how I felt about them. This pattern used a different technique to make the bobbles. I gave it a try, and after many minutes I achieved 1 bobble. After many more minutes I gave up on bobble 2 and switched to the method I had previously learned. I don’t know if I was knitting too tight, or if my needles weren’t pointy enough, or if you have to be a witch. The method I used was:
- 2 KFBs into the same stitch, turn
- Sl1 purlwise, p3, turn
- Sl2 (together) knitwise, k2tog, pass the 2 slipped stitches over
Even changing to a method I could actually do, the one round took at least 45 minutes. And I think I can now say, I am not a huge fan of bobbles. Don’t get me wrong, I think they look good giving an extra little border to the cuff of the sock, but I can definitely say I’ll think twice about patterns in the future that have many bobbles.
