Pattern: Twisted Flower Socks by Ms. Cookie A. As if I had to remind anyone.
Yarn: Cherry Tree Hill Supersock in Burgundy, one skein
Needles: US1
For: My Sockapalooza pal xoxoxo
Modifications: I have a favorite toe thanks to knitting Meida's Socks by Nancy Bush - decrease at each side of the foot every other row until you have a total of 32 stitches (or 8 sts on 4 needles), then decrease every row until there are a total of 8 stitches (or 2 sts on 4 needles), then cut the yarn, take a tapestry needle, thread the yarn through and tighten the hole. I find this makes for a very natural fit that curves nicely over the toes, much better than the straight edge produced when grafting.

So after posting about these last week I immediately ripped the first sock up past the heel so they would match what I did with the second sock, which was to follow the lovely heel pattern as written and extend the foot by another leaf pattern repeat.

We match now.

If you were to take a peek at this pattern, at the heel and foot chart, every single row of them meticulously laid out from bottom to top, all those twisted cables, traveling in a precise direction, where the tiniest of missteps would derail the whole effect, you'd probably want to rip your eyes out before having to start over again.

But it really didn't pain me to do this. I was so zen. It had to be done. I hardly demand perfection for myself; in fact I practically revel in my own knitting disheveledness. But for Sock Pal, for someone whom I will probably not meet in person? My socks will be my proxy. They will be my Goodwill Ambassadors. And like Angelina J0lie they will have to be perfect.

(Maybe I will name my socks Angelina J0lies. They are beautiful, they are complicated, and Br@dPitt would want a piece if he met them.)

And in any case, I just really enjoyed knitting these socks. No second sock syndrome in the slightest. They went by so quickly, despite all the slow-downs of cabling and having to refer to the chart. I'm not normally this patient, but I think having that entire chart for the foot written out that you could tick off, row by row as you finished, kept me focused and paced so that I wasn't constantly badgering myself with Are we there yet? How much longer? Can we go now?

I'm really glad I picked to do these socks. Sock Pal definitely made things easy for me by specifying semisolid to solid colored yarns. Picking the right yarn out of a whole universe of lovely yarns would overload my processes, but when you can disregard the variegateds (ie the hardest ones to resist), the patterns to choose from for strictly solids become obvious. Twisted Flower was obvious. And not only did I have a great time knitting, I was able to do it in confidence, without worrying whether or not my Sock Pal will like them.

Unless of course she thinks Angelina J0lie is ugly.

The only problem I have is to not mail these off right now. I hope I don't misplace them in the moving shuffle!

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Filed Under: Completed Projects | Socks | Sockapalooza | Twisted Flower