Pattern 7 – Odds ‘n Sods

Are you ready? Have you collected all those random scraps of sock yarn from all of their hiding places?  Ok, then here’s the sock for the final round of Sock Madness 2. Before you all go nuts – it’s a lot simpler than it looks. Just take a deep breath or 2 and it’ll be fine. If you look at the sock for a minute you can see that it’s really pretty simple once you get the strips of triangles made and put together.

The other thing about this sock that I should mention right up front is that it’s not the usual fit. The leg part is not going to be snug on most of us but, due to the construction, it’s not slouchy at all. It stands up and it looks great. The foot on the other hand it a classic sock fit. It’s unusual but it works really well and it’s totally cool.

In this post you can see two versions of the sock. Mine used 2 variegated yarns – one more colorful than the other. I think it works really well. The designer used a solid for most of the sock and made the triangles of many different yarns for a patchwork effect. Very differnt from my version and also totally fun.

Speaking of the designer for this round – it’s another returnee from Sock Madness One. Tricia Weatherston is actually the designer who gave us the cuffed sock from last year. That’s the sock that inspired Mtn. Mom’s Godmother Socks. Isn’t it neat the way that worked out?

Here are a few words from Tricia on the inspiration for this sock pattern.

I don’t know how other folk come up with designs for socks or other garments, but for me finished socks come unbidden into my mind. Some I sort out in my head and they never need to get knit. Having a ton of leftover sock yarns, this one needed to be knit. Having a clear picture in my head doesn’t always help once I pick up needles. I had been doing a lot of mitred/modular knitting, and I knew that I should be able to flip triangles back and forth to create a strip. I also knew, having knit some of the captivating modular designs of Red Bird Knits that a sock doesn’t have to be cast on and always knit in a tube. Flat things can be made into tubes, and with a little picking up and knitting, 3 needle bind offs and a wee seam you have a tube to build the rest of your sock. 

My first effort to accomplish this was truly awful. It was a mitred triangle but there was no way I was going to be able to coherently write it down and noone in their right mind or even their SM mind would want to knit it. If I didn’t have this sock in my head taunting me and the desire to submit a design to SM, I would have called it quits at this point. Instead, I hunted out my Module Magic book and sure enough what I wanted were equilateral triangles. Once I knew what kind of triangles, I could work out how many to fit around my leg and what the ideal size of triangle was. Originally the triangles were going to be much smaller but fortunately for you, even my love of fiddly knitting refused to make the triangles smaller. Even in SM knitting there are limits. Through all of this I kept thinking just because I can doesn’t mean I should. It became a discouraging mantra. I mean seriously, why would anyone want to knit these socks. One day , this past November I was reading the yarn harlot and her words leapt out at me”Doing something in a beguiling or particularly graceful way matters too.” If beguiling matters, or devilish as some of you are fond of saying, then I needed to finish the sock and submit it to SM. Lots of things got in my way family, Christmas, other deadlines, but in the end I submitted them the day before the much extended deadline for SM.

Thank you Carole and Hillary for your patience and such a great idea to start with.

Enjoy!

Tricia (Zemy on ravelry)