Chevron Shaped Socks, a prototype

Sometimes, as I knit, I think about knitting. I'm not usually that obsessed. Usually, I'm watching or listening to something or someone and my hands are knitting. Occasionally, though, I will look down at what I am knitting, hands still moving, and think of knitting something else entirely. Often, this thought becomes a puzzle. Even after years of knitting, I can't visualize the stitches. I think of the stitches that are required to form a shape, but I can't see the shape until I knit it. I become curious about the shape I can't quite see. I want to know how my idea will look in reality. I want to put down what I'm knitting and cast on this new idea.

I try to make myself wait. I try to focus on what I'm knitting. Usually I have something else on the needles that I ought to finish. I may be able to postpone casting on the new idea for days, even weeks. I have to fight it, because I know that once I give in and cast on, I will be obsessed. I will drop my other projects, or at least give them very limited attention, and devote my available time to the new idea.

My latest new idea is, no surprise, a sock. Even after I cast on, the design was slow to evolve. At the beginning, I was thinking about the Double Heelix pattern in the latest Knitty, a sock pattern that uses the heel shaping to create a design on the heel. I began to consider how the same concept would work for a toe. My first thought was that since toes and heels are basically the same, the same set of spirals could be worked and used as a toe. Since knitting a heel and using it as a toe didn't seem very challenging, I considered what other patterns might evolve from a toe. The longer I postponed knitting this project, the more curious about it I became. I knew I'd better start with the toe. After all, I'd never be able to last while knitting a leg, heel, and a foot!

Thus I began, simply, with a toe.

I cast on from the toe up and began shaping the toe with increases. After a few rounds, I had enough stitches to begin a pattern. I used the shaping increases as part of the pattern. I had found a chevron design that includes the same increase I was using the the toe. I modified the pattern to make it fit the stitches I had on the needles. As I added more stitches, I worked them into the pattern. Once the toe was done, I had to decide how to knit the foot. I was working with leftovers and couldn't find a yarn that worked with the first two bits. I reluctantly sacrificed one of my favorite hoarded sock yarns, some Koigu KPPPM in beautiful light greens, hoping one hank might be enough for a pair if I used the bits for the toes and heels. I must not have been completely happy with this choice for the foot, because I let it sit like this for days--until I saw a tv commercial.

It was an ad for a store launch of a line of goods from a popular Italian design family. After a little research, I knew what I wanted to do in the foot. I ripped out the hoarded yarn and put it back in the hoard. With just a basket of leftovers and enthusiasm, I finished the sock in a few days.


Thanks to the Missoni family and their chevron patterns, I have a sock. I also have to thank

Target's Missoni products and their inspiring commercial.The cover of the latest Knitty and

Kristen's brilliant connection of it and Missoni.

There's just one sock, though. This prototype has some features I don't like. I'm going to start another with a different set of colors and an altered different pattern. I'll start this one from the cuff and work down to tackle the problem I'm having with cuff sizing.