Thuja

I'm off to a good start on the sock knitting this year.



Pattern: Thuja
Yarn: Interlacements Toasty Toes
Needles: size 5
Started: 1/8/09
Finished: 1/15/09

I modified the pattern a bit so I could knit it with this sport weight yarn instead of the worsted / aran suggested by the pattern. I cast on 48 stitches, knit the top in k3p1 rib instead of the k1p1 in the pattern, and centered 21 sts of rib (starting and ending with a seed stitch column) on the instep and decreased to 23 sts of stockinette on the sole. They turned out really well! If you look closely at the picture you might notice how strangely the yarn behaved - apparently for the leg 48 stitches was the exact number so that each color wrapped once around the sock - perfect 1 row stripes. After the gusset there were only 44 sts so there were 4 stitches of overlap of each colors which started some spiraling. It was a complete accident, but I like the effect on the leg.

Toasty Toes is a nice yarn to work with - soft and fairly springy. It's a heavier weight - they say sport but I'd say more of a DK - which makes the socks a little thicker. They're still thin enough to wear with sneakers, I think, but they sure knit up quickly. The colors overlap a bit more than I like - I'm a big fan of abrupt changes unless the colors are selected to blend well into each other. For example, the pink into orange was quite pretty but the orange into blue gave a really ugly brown. :( There was a knot approximately in the center of my skein, and I think this might have been intentional as the 2nd end was tied to the strings binding the skein when I wound it. A pretty good idea, which I've heard that Malabrigo sock does as well.