Socks and Ribbing
Jul. 2nd, 2007 09:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crewgrrlI am convinced that ribbing is NOT for her pleasure.
I am in the middle of a second pair of socks (remember that we no longer count the tragically frogged sock in the count). The first sock is the Broad Ripple socks from our beloved Knitty. The next is a pair of Jaywalkers in Cherry Tree Hill Supersock Merino yarn in this color (isn't is pretty?). Yes, every blogger and podcaster seemingly must knit a pair of these, to the point where Alcariel is calling them her "One Mind, One Voice" socks and is knitting them out of Borg Queen sock yarn (as in, we are all slowly being assimilated by the loveliness that are Jaywalkers).
Now, a word about sock construction. I know y'all are thinking - it's a sock, what do you mean it has to be constructed. Even if you're hand knitting it, what does construction matter. So, that's all not true. Socks have part. The chief ones are - leg, heel, foot. The leg can then be further subdivided into two parts - the cuff and the actual leg. Let's look at the cuff for a moment.
What is the purpose of the cuff? It is to keep the sock up on the leg. So it has to be stretchy, and actually a teensy bit smaller than the leg of the sock. That means that you have to knit in a stitch pattern that will shrink in on itself, like 1x1 or 2x2 ribbing. This is of course, assuming that you are knitting with a yarn that doesn't have any elastic in it (a garden variety wool or wool blend). If the yarn has some elastic in it (like Cascade Fixation), then the cuff does not serve the same structural purpose.
OK, let's assume you're knitting a sock in a nice springy superwash merino (like my pretty Cherry Tree Hill). Even though the yarn is nice and soft and stretchy, it doesn't have an external force that draws it back in. It needs some nice ribbing (did I just use those 2 words next each other? heh heh heh) to make sure it stays up. So the Jaywalker patterns has you do 1 inch of 2x2 ribbing (1 inch of ribbing is pretty standard). And I hate it. It's boring. My Broad Ripple socks have a cuff that is a garter stitch version of the leg pattern. But every other sock pattern I have seen so far has at least an inch of ribbing, if not some type of ribbing down the whole leg.
It bores me to absolute tears. But I will press on, because the yarn is so pretty...
I am in the middle of a second pair of socks (remember that we no longer count the tragically frogged sock in the count). The first sock is the Broad Ripple socks from our beloved Knitty. The next is a pair of Jaywalkers in Cherry Tree Hill Supersock Merino yarn in this color (isn't is pretty?). Yes, every blogger and podcaster seemingly must knit a pair of these, to the point where Alcariel is calling them her "One Mind, One Voice" socks and is knitting them out of Borg Queen sock yarn (as in, we are all slowly being assimilated by the loveliness that are Jaywalkers).
Now, a word about sock construction. I know y'all are thinking - it's a sock, what do you mean it has to be constructed. Even if you're hand knitting it, what does construction matter. So, that's all not true. Socks have part. The chief ones are - leg, heel, foot. The leg can then be further subdivided into two parts - the cuff and the actual leg. Let's look at the cuff for a moment.
What is the purpose of the cuff? It is to keep the sock up on the leg. So it has to be stretchy, and actually a teensy bit smaller than the leg of the sock. That means that you have to knit in a stitch pattern that will shrink in on itself, like 1x1 or 2x2 ribbing. This is of course, assuming that you are knitting with a yarn that doesn't have any elastic in it (a garden variety wool or wool blend). If the yarn has some elastic in it (like Cascade Fixation), then the cuff does not serve the same structural purpose.
OK, let's assume you're knitting a sock in a nice springy superwash merino (like my pretty Cherry Tree Hill). Even though the yarn is nice and soft and stretchy, it doesn't have an external force that draws it back in. It needs some nice ribbing (did I just use those 2 words next each other? heh heh heh) to make sure it stays up. So the Jaywalker patterns has you do 1 inch of 2x2 ribbing (1 inch of ribbing is pretty standard). And I hate it. It's boring. My Broad Ripple socks have a cuff that is a garter stitch version of the leg pattern. But every other sock pattern I have seen so far has at least an inch of ribbing, if not some type of ribbing down the whole leg.
It bores me to absolute tears. But I will press on, because the yarn is so pretty...
