Today has been a marvellous day. Not only is the light finally returning to our northern skies, but today has been sunny and WARM. Like 14 degrees above zero warm. Astounding. I threw open the windows for a while are shocked all the spiders who I'm sure were hanging on with all eight legs as they swung in the breeze. I know this because I've been picking up bits of web ever since.
It took me a little longer to get back to you about the Gathering Sunlight socks for a couple of reasons. A couple of different Muses came rampaging in and left the place a bit of a mess. My Writing Muse arrived unannounced and declared a 2 day writing and editing spate on a book I've been working on since I was 13 years old. This threw off all sorts of things like tidying up after myself and eating. I'm talking about 9 hours at the compute desk at a stretch. (And judging from how my body felt, there wasn't enough of that going on either!).
And when she decided it was time to go, again unannounced, I found myself left with a head cold and very little will to do much of anything at all!
So, it was after this had all passed that I started to write the pattern for my new socks, which, by the way, were warmly accepted and I believe they've been worn just about every chance the recipient has had to wear them.
Now, to write a sock pattern is a series of interesting bits and pieces. The cuff isn't the standard 1x1 or 2x2 ribbing. Not for these socks. The cuff is the foundation for the pattern that follows, so a whole paragraph is dedicated to it instead of a line. Then the pattern is a great back and forth of increases and decreases that create a multitude of little suns marching up (or down if your suns are setting and not rising!) the leg and top of the foot.
I purposely chose to use very simple increases and decreases for this because I wanted it to be easy to memorize and fun to knit. And the balls do slide diagonally around the leg instead of forming lines and phalanxes down the leg. (It's not every day you get to put "phalanx" in a blog post!)
So once you get churning out the pattern down the leg, then you have to get other people through the heel portion of the sock. This is pure voodoo magic. To take a single piece of yarn and change directions 90 degrees so that you can continue down the foot. Amazing. Stunning. And downright confusing as Hell until you've made about 20 pairs of socks.
So then once the heel is done, all is good until you want to finish your sock off. The explanation for the toe is a piece of cake after navigating through the heel stitches. But if you've never done one before, you're back into uncharted territory!So all in all, socks are super fun to knit, but they take a whole heap of words to explain.
All that said, I hope you like the pattern. It's available for $5.00 CAD at my Ravelry store. If you're a member of Ravlery, you can just click here and see for yourself.
