Faux Jaywalker Socks -- done!

My first post-Xmas socks (and only the second out of seven pairs I have made that are for ME) are finished!



I'm really happy with the way the stripes came out matched. This didn't take a whole lot of effort (not like Matt's socks).

I started with the chevron pattern from Sensational Knitted Socks by Charlene Schurch, but at first I must have mis-calculated the number of stitches required, because I could barely get the leg (that was as far as I knit it) over my heel. Here's that too-tight leg:


So I ripped that and started over with the same chevron stitch pattern, but the stitch count from the famous Jaywalker socks, and the "forethought" heel from SKS, and voila! They seem to have worked out, except that they are actually a tad too big. (And yet I keep reading that Jaywalkers run narrow.) A trip through the wash is in their future to hopefully shrink them up a little bit, but if that doesn't work, well, there is a certain 12-yo in the house with feet just slightly larger than mine.

If I knit these again I would actually chop out the black-and-white faux Fair Isle bits -- I saw somewhere on the Internet where someone had done that with this very yarn, and it worked out fine (I had plenty of yarn left over, so I think this would work for me, too). I really like the forethought heel, the way the stripes are in a bulls'-eye pattern around the heel and the stripe pattern is not disrupted from the leg to the foot.

It's a bit fiddly, but worth it to me.

Here's the muppet-look sock after the heel is finished and grafted, just before the provisionally-cast-on heel stitches are picked up and the waiting instep stitches put back on the needles to knit the foot.





Do you notice that one sock is slightly lighter in color than the other? That's not my limited photography skills, that's how they actually are. Did I not get the same dye lot? I did not, I was snatching up yarn at a LYS retirement sale and I don't know now if I knew I was getting different dye lots, or just mis-read the ball bands. This is Schoeller-Stahl Fortissima Colori Socka Color, 75% superwash and 25% polyamid, fingering weight, knit on my kinky #1 Addi Turbo, Magic-loop style as usual.

I'm starting some actual Jaywalkers now, and have just knit the cuff. Which does fit over my foot, so that's a good thing. Whether this one is also too loose remains to be seen. I don't know how that could be with my tight knitting, but after this last one, who knows.