Almost Argyle Sock

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I wanted to make argyle socks, and I came across this cool pattern that makes the diamonds with knits and purls rather than colors. It was fun to knit and it didn’t take long to memorize the pattern:

16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

You form a triangle with two purls that get two stitches closer together every round. You work the inside in stockinette and the outside in seed stitch, separated by two knit stitches. After R10, you continue in reverse from R9 back to R1 to complete one full set of diamonds.

I like how the argyle pattern looks, but one issue is that the diamonds stretch out horizontally when I wear the socks, especially around the ankles. It would be interesting to tweak the pattern to make the diamonds taller or narrower so that they look better when stretched out.

To match the pattern photos, I used a solid gray yarn. I didn’t realize until after I bought it that it was non-superwash organic wool (and 20% nylon) dyed with plants. That all sounds nice, but whenever I knit with it for long enough my fingertips turned gray. Apparently this is called crocking. I’m not sure if it’s because of the natural dying process, but I’m suspicious of it now.

I decided to use DPNs again like I did for my first socks. It worked well since each needle had 16 stitches, the same as the pattern repeat. I probably knit faster on circular needles with magic loop because there’s less time spent switching needles (and fewer chances to drop stitches) but I still like DPNs. With circular needles I sometimes have trouble forcing stitches across, and I tend to pull the last stitch too tightly on the cable – the opposite of laddering.

Like with my last sock, I turned the heel in sl1 k1. But this time I went even further, continuing in heel stitch on the sole until I was done the gusset decreases. This made a strip of thickened fabric 12 stitches wide over 16 rounds, which will hopefully last longer before getting holes. It looks a bit narrow, so next time I might make it wider than the base of the turned heel.