Halfway Finished With 100 Days Of Sock Knitting

Back in 2019, I wanted to spend 2020 knitting socks. Socks for me. Socks for the Bearded One. Socks for the kiddo. Socks for friends. Did I knit socks in Janaury? Nope. Did I knit socks in February? Kind of. I started a pair of kid socks, and then they sat untouched for months after my own kiddo pulled out a needle’s worth of stitches. Ugh. Then the 100 Day Project kicked off and I made yarn for 100 Days which didn’t leave much room for sock knitting, but did get me some lovely new handspun. When that project ended, I wasn’t sure what to do next. I’d given up on a year of socks or even six months of socks. 100 days of sock knitting, though? That I could do. I quietly kicked off the project on July 28th, 2020 and got back to work on the lingering kid socks. Those only took a week to finish at a few rounds every day. What was next on the list? These blue-striped beauties for the Bearded One, which thanks to daily knitting, were knit in just under a month.

While they weren’t unceremoniously removed from their needles by a curious kiddo, knitting these socks wasn’t without aggravation. I’m a stickler for making self-striping yarn match up on each sock. The first step is matching up the yarns and making sure both skeins are in the same point in the color sequence. It’s a good thing I bought this yarn at a discount and got two balls because both of them came with knots. The stripe sequence was completely reversed in the middle of one ball! Thankfully, the largest chunks from both balls were enough to knit matched socks. And I’ve got enough leftovers to make a smaller matching pair for the kiddo. So, pulling the yarn balls apart, cutting, detangling, and spreading them all over the room for a few days was totally worth it.

The other big aggravation was finding two dropped gusset stitches that somehow escaped being knitted together with the edge of the heel flap. That part was all me, and easy enough to sew up at the end.

The pattern is my own much tweaked and refined default toe-up sock pattern. Tweaking continued with this pair because I had to figure out how to knit the socks so I could flip them inside out after binding off to get a princess sole without purling. Totally worked though it did feel odd to knit a heel flap with the right side inside the sock. The pair got the Bearded One’s seal of approval so they must have turned out great. :D

I’m aiming to get the pattern written up properly in a wide range of sizes as I knit them. Figured I’d start with the biggest size and work my way down. It’s going to be awhile before this particular pattern is anywhere close to finished, but I will keep you updated.

With these socks complete, I’ve knit 2 pairs during my 100 Days of Sock Knitting project. Pair three is on the needles and there are cables afoot with 50 days of dedicated sock knitting time left. More on those socks later though.

The Specs:

Pattern: My own default toe-up sock pattern

Yarn: 437 yds (390.3 m) of Wisdom Yarns Stanza - 703 Burns

Needles: US 1.5 - 2.5 mm circular needles

Dates: August 6 - September 4, 2020

Ravelry Page and more notes here