The Knitting Fiend

Have you noticed that so far, I’ve only knit ankle socks from patterns created with my sockulators? And I only recommend knitting shortish socks– as opposed to knee socks or thigh thighs?

Have you wondered why? It’s because I wanted to write simple sockulators that didn’t require the knitter to make a lot of decisions or take a large number of measurements. Simple means the sock has the same circumference around the ankle and foot. It also means no calf shaping.

Most sock patterns published in magazines are simple in this way. However, no calf shaping means no knee socks for Lucia. Why not? The photo of my leg explains “why not”?

I have big calves. In fact, once when I went to a fitness club, the trainer took measurements all over. He got to my calves and said “WOW! You have big calves! I said: “Oh”. He said: Those may be the biggest calves I’ve ever measured on a woman!” (And note, I am not fat. Just have big calves. I got these from my Dad.)

But, guess what? Hand knit knee socks will appear in the in my future. Why? Because someone with narrow ankles and feet emailed me with her sock problem. She had cast on for a sock; it fit in the calf. But, the wise woman had the sense to try the sock on as she knit and discovered the sock was baggy around the ankles; she anticipated it would be baggy around the foot. She wanted to know what to do.

I explained there are several things one can do:

1. Put up with badly fitting socks. If you are knitting your own socks, this makes very little sense.
2. Pick a very, very elastic stitch pattern like 1 x 1 ribbing or 2 x 2 ribbing and/ or knit with a very elastic yarn. Yes, some companies make sock yarns containing spandex; this can help solve the problem. Still, if your calves are very shapely, it may not fully solve the problem. And two is big down sides to this solution: You may not be able to use the yummy yarn you love and you have a limited pattern selection!
3. Change needle diameters to vary the stitch gauge. If your calves are big, you use large needles at the top and smaller needles at the bottom. This solution is a bit hit and miss, as you need to guess how much changing the needles will change gauge. However, it’s can be a reasonable solution when you are knitting socks with fancy stitch patterns and you don’t want to think too much.
4. Actually calculate the shaping. The downside: You need to measure, and calculate. If you want to incorporate a fancy stitch pattern, you will need to think a bit.

Ok, so what’s going to happen with this sockulator? It will design a sock that lets you vary:

1. The total length. You can make knee socks, ankle socks or even thigh highs. To vary that, you will need to specify the length of the black line shown on the figure above.
2. The circumference around the top of the sock. This is marked as “calf” above; that’s the correct name for a knee sock. But, if you knit a thigh high, you’ll just need to cross out “calf” and think “thigh”.
3. The circumference around the ankle. This is marked “ankle”.
4. The circumference around the foot. This is marked “ankle”.
5. The negative ease for the for all circumferences. Usually people want their socks to be 5% to 10% narrower than their body dimension; so I’ll let you decide.
6. The foot length. That’s not marked, but I already mark it on my other sockulators.
7. I might let people vary the gusset height. I don’t think many people using a sockulator want to overthink the gusset height. Still, some who have hand knit socks in the past know they’d like “taller” gussets and some want “shorter” ones. So, I’ll make a “tall”, “average” and “short” pull down menu for that.

What type of sock will the next sockulator create? The sock will have a gusset and flap heel turn because that’s required to let you specify the foot diameter and ankle independently. This time, I’m going to knit some sort of toe I’ve never tried. (I haven’t decided. It might be a round toe.) I’m going to knit toe up– because it’s easier to write instructions that incorporate a fancy stitch pattern that way. It’s also easier to verify the calf fit as you go, and you can decide if you are sick of knitting the sock and stop if you feel like it.

My sock will have a simple stitch pattern. The current candidates are broken rib, 1 x 1 or 2 x 2 rib. I’ll be flipping through books tonight to see if I can find some other stitch pattern I like for this sock. If you have an idea for a simple stitch pattern with a repeat less than 4 stitches, suggest it and I’ll consider it. If I think it will look good in the variegated yarn, I’ll give it a try!

As I knit the sock, I’ll blog about some of the decisions involved when performing the calculations. That way the people who eventually want to design fancy socks will understand how to merge the shaping calculations and fancy stitch patterns. (Some of the “merging” involves realizing that rounding is always involved. That means adding or subtracting a stitch to make a stitch pattern “work” is entirely legal. You’ll see what I mean when I get to the heel turn!)

Oh, the upcoming sock needs a name. How about “The Sock that Fits Sock-u-lator Sock”. (Yeah. I think of snappy names. If you can think of a better one, let me know!)