Third Pattern – Painted Madness

As we said before, the speculation surounding this round 3 sock has been amusing.  Ideas have circulated about lace, cables and intarsia but nobody ever mentioned a cuffed sock. Yup, a cuffed sock. 

One of our goals with Sock Madness was to share different techniques and design ideas.  Naturally cables and lace figure prominently but we also received a few interesting cuff treatments.  There are so many interesting ideas out there about sock architecture – there was an entrelac sock in the Spring 2007 issue of IK and Grumperina was recently knitting a sock from the new book, Favorite Socks, which requires one to knit the instep back and forth before joining it with the sole which is attached as it too is knit back and forth. There are many more methods  out there which are equally novel.  This is just one representation of a somwhat unusual cuff construction and we hope that you enjoy it.

Hi Sock Knitters,

Congratulations on all the gorgeous socks and more congratulations on the wonderful camaraderie and spirit that has developed over the first two rounds of socks. I am so impressed!

I was really taken with the Fair Isle sock in Nancy Bush’s book Folk Socks and these socks and others have developed out of that one cuffed sock. I tend to think of them as my show off cuff socks. This particular sock is the unbeaded version of my “rock” sock that was part of a spinning workshop that was all based on inspiration from rocks. For another version, you can look at my harlequin sock in the XRX book Socks,Socks,Socks. I really love knitting socks this way. I feel as if I have this little blank canvas of cuff to fill with some beautiful handspun or an  interesting technique and I still feel like I’m performing a magic trick when I reach down inside and pull the sock inside out at the end of the ribbing.

When knitting this sock without the focal point of the rock chip beads, I was looking for two things. As a Canadian, I wanted a Canadian handpainted yarn and one that would look like little splotches of paint rather than the more typical pooling and striping. I was really pleased with the way the painted yarns sock worked out. Sadly though, the designer, Virginia Van Santen of Painted Yarns passed away 2 weeks ago and these yarns will no longer be available to us.

I am really looking forward to seeing your versions of this sock. Happy Knitting and Good Luck!

Tricia Weatherston

P.S. I currently have 10 pairs of socks on needles, 6 of which I have knit on in the past month or so!