March Socks

These are my March socks.  I am having a lot of fun with them.  Paying with cables, 

just a little 4 stitch cross over on every 5th row.  Pretty for sandals this summer.

Playing with heels.  I'm using Lucy Neatby's garter short row heel.  It is interesting to do it that way. With garter stitch, the wraps don't have to be picked up and knit.  They seamlessly work into the garter stitch surface as is.    

Playing with toes.  

This is using an old fashioned garter square toe.  You knit a garter stitch square.  In my case, I cast on with 12 stitches.  I then knit 12 garter stitch ridges.  I picked up 12 stitches along the cast on edge (you could use a provisional cast on, but for 12 stitches, that is more trouble than I think it is worth.) and 12 stitches, 1 in each garter ridge along the side edges.  With your live stitches, these form your toe.  Because I only knit a 12 stitch square and I have a foot that needs more than 48 stitches, I did have to do some traditional toe increases.  On another pair I would probably do more stitches and ridges, so that by the time I have picked up all the stitches around the square, I would have enough stitches to simply begin knitting the rest of my sock, but for this pair, too late to worry about that now. 

I'm very pleased with the way this toe fits my flat stubby appendages.  Lucy's garter heel has been a form fitting favourite for a while now.  I'm really looking forward to a very comfy pair of socks.  

What I am looking forward to just a little bit less, is how fast I am going to have to knit the second sock.  March is slipping away so rapidly that the second sock is going to have to be knit in 10 days, twice as fast as the first.  Sigh.

On the other hand, March is slipping away rapidly!!!  Even though the snow piles in my yard seem to be invincible, spring is here and if the sun ever peeks out from behind the  clouds...