Socks: The Return of Routine

I sat here this morning, debating what to write about.  To my right was a pile with the purple sweater and the interesting sweater, and to my left was socks.  In front of me was spinning. I'm not ready yet to tell you about spinning, and the purple ragg sweater still looks exactly like it did the other day, just more of it.  So socks.

I sold my coffee table in my garage sale, which meant that I had to do a little reorganizing of my surfaces in my livingroom.  My lovely yarn bowl now is living on the table beside me as is my coffee cup spot.  Having the yarn bowl right beside me, means that I have actually picked up and worked on the socks that live there,  

these pretty things from a sock blank from I don't recall who.  The blank was given to me as part of a trade for a small loom.   

They are part of my heel and toe play from last year and are probably going to be the last heel flap socks I knit for a while.  Although with the recent lack of sock completion, maybe I am okay with heel flaps again.  

The general pattern is from Nancy Bush's Knitting Vintage Socks, the Lichen Sock, which is a variation of the Golf Socks from the book.  It appears very near the front of the book, right after the 'toes' section.  

It's a nice simple sock with a Welsh heel and a Star Toe of three points.  When I started, I debated making a star toe from the toe up, but I was working on it as I was moving, preparing to move, unpacking from the move, and I don't think I was ready to figure out how to make a good fitting sock with a new sort of toe.  My short stubby toes usually demand something different than star toes, so I went with a my regular 'cast on and knit around both sides' toe.  

One of the reasons I originally bought the book was for the many different heels the book has in it, but for this pair of socks, I went with a standard heel flap based on the Maia Spins Tutorial  for how to do a heel flap toe up.  It's a great little resource for how to figure out where to start the flap of a toe up heel flap.  Which really isn't a toe up heel flap at all.  It is much more of a bottom of the foot flap, but it lets you put the heel flap with its opportunity for extra firmness by stitch pattern or a double strand of yarn, right where I wear them out, at the bottom of my foot , under my heel.  

Mostly though, I just was not ready for figuring out a new heel  form and the challenges that would come with knitting from the toe up.  Besides, it allowed me to add the ribbed sections to the gusset area.  Looks almost cool.  If being cool still matters that is.  I just like the lines straight against the gusset slope.  

I guess it is more of an inspired by sock, but I do love the book and its array of wearable, soundly designed patterns from long ago, updated and made easily readable and knittable for the modern knitter.

And that is what I am working on when I am done working with big needles, and after spinning  stalled.  Wow.  Two sock knitting posts in the space of one week.  What is this world coming too?  

Routine.  That is what it is.  I almost have a routine.