Baby socks!

In my last post I was trying to decide the best/easiest approach to making the stretchy bind-off for a pair of baby socks.  

I decided to use Diana Sullivan's half-pitch method.   I am happy with the result!

Since the baby is a toddler, the small child-size socks in Eileen Montgomery's basic sock pattern were a little too long.

  For this version, I cast on 23 (versus the original 25) stitches in waste yarn.  The waste yarn is bright green in the photos below.  Then I knitted one row of ravel cord, lime green in the photo.  Then I knitted one row, before proceeding to the short-rowed heel, the sole of the foot, and continuing with the toe. 

I modified Eileen's method a little, by hanging a loop on one side every other row, using the sew-as-you go technique, as I knitted the 25 rows for the instep.  This means that I will have one less seam to sew up at the end. Once the instep was complete, I hung the open stitches from the beginning on the adjoining 23 needles, reversing the side from the first sock, so that the seams on both socks will both be on the opposite side of the leg.   I added a couple of plain rows on this sock (purple) before beginning the ribbing,  to force the stripes of the ribbing to begin on the same color as the first sock.

I knitted 36 rows of ribbing on the first sock, but on the second I was more concerned with making sure the last couple of rows were dark blue, so that the socks would match.  I stopped at 35 rows on the second sock. No one is going to count the rows of knitting, but the visual impact of a different edge color would be very noticeable.   I used the half pitch method to knit the last row.  I thought my machine would jam as it knitted very hard with all the extra yarn winding around the extra needles on that row.  Probably that means my ribber needs an adjustment, as I noticed Diana's  machine in her video did not make the awful noise that mine did.  

I bound off using the loop through the loop method that Diana suggested.  As you can see in the photo below, the completed bind-off stretches to nearly double the normal width.

As it is late here, I have decided to sew the seams tomorrow morning when I am fresh.

The sock on the left has the ravel cord and waste yarn removed, and a few loose ends to weave in.  Since there is only one row of ravel cord, it can easily be pulled out, completely separating the waste yarn from the body of the knitting.  I started sewing the seam on this sock.  Due to the random nature of the yarn striping, the stripes do not match exactly.  If I were to force the stripes to meet, the seam would be lumpy.  The sock on the right still has waste yarn and ravel cord in place, and the seam is completely open. 


I am loving the happy colors of this yarn.  I bought it at a LYS (local yarn store) for half off.  It was a lonesome 50 gram ball, the last one in this colorway.  An adult sock normally takes an entire 50 gram ball for one sock, but I was able to get three toddler socks from one ball.  Had I not had to re-knit a couple of times to downsize the sock and fix a mistake in the sew-as-you-go seam, possibly I could have gotten four, but perhaps not, due to color matching.