Fiber Fool

Pattern: DK Balance Socks
Yarn: Trekking XXL color 109
Needles: Set of 5, US 1 Metal DPNs (Susan Bates probably)
Gauge: 9 sts and 11.5 rows/in in stockinette
Size: Adult Medium
Recipient: Me, Myself, and I :-)

It took me a week per sock to knit this pair. There was just something that really came together on this one. The yarn, the stitch pattern, the amount the stitch pattern was repeated etc. Making the mini-cables can slow you down some so I used it as accents around the leg near the top, down the sides the leg through the instep and down the center back of the leg, and finally across the instep right before the toe. It made for an interesting knit as things were changing along the way, but not so drastically that you always had to have the pattern within arms reach. I also love the geeky reflective symmetry of the socks where one has right crossing cables and the other has left :-)

Because these socks ended up being so well balanced between ease and interestingness of knitting, and balanced in looks between the varigated yarn and the mini cables, and finally the symmetry present in the pair I had to go with Julie’s suggestion for the name of the pattern - Balance (Julie, your copy of the pattern should be waiting in your Inbox and three others of you who made musical suggestions got chosen via the random number generator). Some of the other names that were suggested are so inspiring I think there may be future patterns designed to fit the names!

The pattern for the DK Balance Socks is available now, though do be aware that I am leaving town and will not be available for download troubleshooting until Tuesday. As soon as you place your order and it has cleared PayPal your pattern is available for up to 5 total downloads over 10 days by accessing your order history page. You may need to temporarily disable firewalls or virus checkers to get a clean download and it also helps to just right-click on the link and choose “Save Target As” to save it to your hard drive rather than opening the PDF in your browser window due to the size of the file. 99% of the downloads work if you follow those suggestions. Oh, and for whatever reason, the downloads don’t look obviously like downloads, but just click (or right-click) on the name of the pattern and that should start the download. I’ll get to any questions on Tuesday.

I also wanted to gush about this yarn. I love the ombre striping effect of many of the Trekking yarns and I was almost pouty about the fact that this particular color (109) had short color changes. However, now that the socks are completed I am sooooo happy with them! You know how varigeted yarns usually look funny at the gusset (and sometimes the toe)? This yarn magically did not do that! I’m amazed! I’ve only had one other varigated yarn behave so well and that was some Regia I used for DH’s Camo socks. I did find the yarn a tad bit splitty so I had to pay a bit of attention to it, but it was pretty easy to speed along through the stockinette sections on these. Now that I’m working with one of the barber pole ombre colorways I think my 109 felt a bit thinner than the one on the needles now, but then again last night I noticed that my ombre one varied a fair bit in thickness so who knows. I also love the overall color of this pair of socks as it contains my favorite colors of green and purple, but it pushes me a bit beyond that with a fair bit of pink, yet that pink is tamed with a tad bit of a neutral khaki in there too. But it will go with the vast majority of my wardrobe which is quite exciting!

We’ll be hitting the road for Minneapolis sometime late this evening so wish us well on our road trip that has us on the road for about the same number of hours that we’ll actually be in Minneapolis *sigh*. To all you Minneapolis area gals, I’ll have to try arrange some sort of gathering the next time I’m out and have more time (and money) to spend there.