Round 5 – Hippy Ripply Retro Socks

This pair of socks was a Sock Madness first for me – the first test sock to become a pair.  Can you believe that?  I guess it was because my daughter laid claim to them as soon as she saw them on the needles.   I actually finished then a while ago and, as you can see – they’ve been around.  Here they are enjoying the sand and surf in Virginia Beach.  They’ve also been to a Girl Scout cookie sale where my daughter showed them off to everyone she saw.

The yarn I used was Dancing Leaf Farm Sock Hop in a color called Carnival.  Normally I wouldn’t go for a yarn like this but the colors were gorgeous and sucked me in.  It’s a wildly colored yarn and this pattern broke it up in such a way that it became even more interesting.  If there’s a lesson to be learned it’s that we should all take chances every now and again.

The pattern itself isn’t terribly difficult and we thought that it would be a nice change of pace.  It’s not always about difficult – sometimes it’s about the flow.  This is a toe up sock and it does use the Japanese short row heel.  Try it – you might like it.  In my socks I found that this method produced some of the nicest heels I’ve ever made.  Pefection!  Is it worth the fiddliness of using all those safety pins?  You be the judge.

Here are a few words from this round’s designer, Helen Darmara:

Hello Fellow Sock Knitters!
Like many of you, I love knitting socks. Partly it’s because my socks change size and shape less than the rest of me, partly it’s because I used to live in Houston, Texas where the only knitting I wanted to do or wear were socks. It’s so hot there that when people want a fire in the fireplace, they turn the air conditioning up!
Anyway, now I live on the coast of Maine and need the socks to keep my feet warm, so that’s what I do, I knit socks. I knit the occasional sweater, but that’s partly to use up the stash so I can buy new sock yarn.
I finally built up a stock of plain, quick to knit, no nonsense socks for the winter and decided to try something new. I had some Knit Picks Felici yarn, in a colorway that reminded me of my high school bed cover. The bed cover had big gold, orange and brown flowers, rather muted, but amazingly, exactly matched by the Felicia, with its very hippy retro shades of brown, orange, red and gold.
I wanted to design a pattern to break up the stripes. I’ve used slip stitch texture patterns before with painted yarns and liked the effect. This time, I used a slip stitch and lace combination that in the striped version reminds me of children’s jackets from the 50s with patterned fronts and plain knit collars. So, I named the pattern Hippy Ripply Retro Socks. I prefer a slip stitch or peasant heel when I knit with a striped yarn; it gives that nifty chevron at the heel. I confuse myself with the yarn over short rows, my picked up wraps are really out of scale, so I tried the Japanese short row technique. I hope you like the result.

Have fun!