Cleaning out the Socks

So in preparation for Sumer of Socks 2008 I’m cleaning out all of the sock parts that have been dead at the bottom of my knitting basket. First up?

The Details Socks:

I started these during last summer of socks as a design problem. Basically I was going to knit this guy sock pattern out of a book and the ribbing and the sock body totally and completely didn’t match or work together in any way. And that pist me off. If I’m going to pay for a pattern I’d like at least a little thought to have gone into it. So I ripped that out and decided to design my own with the utmost attention to detail.

The ultimate goal was to write up the pattern and offer it to you guys for free. So these socks have sat finished in the knitting basket for months now waiting for that to happen. Honestly though? It’s not going to. I’m just not 100% happy with the design.

I do love how the ribbing flows into the braided cable:

And how the cables look on the side of the foot:

I even like how the cable becomes the decreases for the toe:

But the part that was supposed to make the sock came out complete crap. The transition between the two cables:

Yeah. Just a big old tranny mess.

The braid turns into the purl part instead of flowing down the heel like I wanted… it just didn’t work out at all. But that’s ok. Not all designs can be winners. Matt loves them, though because they remind him of kilt socks.

I think another issue I have with actually finishing socks is that taking beautiful photographs of your own feet is not easy. Even taking ones where the knit looks good is difficult. I always end up with a lot of weird crops like this:

Not so good.

Plus these are gray and about a million sizes too big for me – making my little photoshoot doubly hard. I probably could have waited for Matt to help but with 2 teams in the playoffs and a new GTA game his evenings are booked solid. Heh.

Anyone have any good tips on sock photography?