Eagles Socks for Jim

Several years ago, I knit a pair of chilly-night socks for my brother-in-law, Jim. I had Bill try them on to check out the fit and he said that while the socks felt just fine, he wasn't sure about my color selections. "Cowboy colors for an Eagles fan???"

A while later, I got one sock back for repairs because, "the dog ate my sock."

Well, this sock is still in my mending bag. (Along with quite a few other items. Apparently, I'm not much for mending knits.) So, I decided to knit a fresh pair of chilly-night socks for Jim. This time in more appropriate colors.

I finished the first one in time to include it in the Christmas shipment. And it's mate is now finished too.

The best pair of colors I found at the Anacortes LYS, were Jojoland Tonic in a dark green (AW252) and a light gray (AW304) - which I'm going to call "silver". This is a DK weight, but it isn't a true sock yarn. So I decided I would use real sock yarn for the toe and heel. I had leftover black sock yarn in my stash (pretty sure it's Valley Yarns, Huntington). I doubled it to get approximately the same yarn weight as the Tonic.

I started with a linen stitch toe which I copied from A. Karen Alfke's "Turbo Toes" in "The Knitter's Book of Socks" by Clara Parkes.

Then sent to stockinette stitch on the sole and mistake rib on the instep. (Mistake rib = 4 stitches in garter, stockinette, garter, reverse stockinette.)

I used Cat Bordhi's "Riverbed" arch expansion on the sole.

Then, I worked a short-row heel in linen stitch. (More on this in my next post.)

For the leg, I used mistake rib all the way around and mirrored the stripe sequence I used in the foot. I continued with a bit of 2-color, 1x1 ribbing ...

and ended with tubular rib with green on the outside and silver on the inside.

Here are a couple shots of the sock on my foot (even though it's a little too big).

So, what's my assessment of these socks? If I were to use Tonic again for socks, I might try an even smaller needle size. US 6-8 is recommended on the label. I used US 4 and would consider 3 next time. I would likely try a different rib pattern. One that's a little firmer than Mistake Rib. Finally, while I like the linen stitch heel, I'm not quite "there" with it yet.