Year of Projects 3: De Stijl 01

SOCKTOPUS: Totally Vanilla • Kandahar • V Junkie • Kwalia • Farmer McGregor • Shur'tugal • 2luvcrew • Vorticity • Rumpled! • Crowley • Om Shanti • Mince Pie Mayhem • Hundred Acre Wood • De Stijl • Fiori di Zucca • Caretta Caretta • Spring Shoots

With my Ravellenic Games project off the needles I can finally concentrate on the next pair of socks: De Stijl. The pattern is really interesting, with long strands created and then picked up a handful or rounds later.

As you can imagine it's not particularly stretchy, so lots of knitters have warned about sizing ... don't go too small. On my first attempt I cast on for the large size and worked 2 yarn overs at each float to keep them loose enough. But after working an inch or two of the leg it was obviously too big and the stranding was too loose. Nothing for it but to rip out and start again. The medium size - 63 sts on 2.5mm needles - with one yarn over at each float worked for me. But note that I switched down to 2.25mm needles before the heel because I like negative ease at the arch and through the foot.

The pattern works best with variegated yarn, so I've dug into my stash for this skein of Sydney Sock with Nylon. The colourway "Cheboygan River" is more neon blue/green than the photos show - from bright cyans, through periwinkle blues and kelly greens all the way to deep indigo navy blues. The more colours represented, the better the stranding looks.

The top of the leg starts with a provisional cast on which is then worked together with the working stitches 16 rounds later to create a folded double-thickness cuff. I worked a crocheted provisional cast on using the instructions here and it unzipped beautifully. Hurray! Finally, I don't have to cringe every time I see the words "provisional cast on"! In fact, I can now do it without a tutorial in front of me, so that's progress.

Sock two is already well underway - five more bands of stranding before the heel. Once at the heel, the remainder of the sock is just plain old vanilla stockinette, so this should just fly off the needles. Time to start looking at the stash to pick a yarn for the next pattern: Shur'tugal. For me, looking at finished projects for this pattern in Ravelry is the best way for me to visualize what yarn will suit the pattern best. What did we ever do before Ravelry?