This here sock has been taking up all my spare knitting time for the past month. It’s my entry for the Hill Country Yarns Sock Pattern Contest. Meet Brancusi.

I had been all coy about showing it in progress, but now that it’s been submitted, I’m all for showing it off. I won’t know until August 31st if it was selected as a winner. I’m pretty darn proud of it. It took three sock sketches to arrive at the final pattern combination.

I graphed it out on June 2, the day we arrived back from Paris and started knitting it then. It’s been full-steam ahead since then, stealing 20 minutes at breakfast before work, a round or two between meetings and before-bed toiling. I’m at the heel flap of the second sock, so that should be finished within a week or so.

Inspired by Brancusi’s “Endless Column” these socks serve as support and compliment to one of the world’s greatest pieces of art: you. A densely knit, top-down sock with a hemmed stockinette cuff, a geometric twisted stitches and traveling cable pattern, an eye of partridge heel flap and anatomically-correct toes.

While they could be knit with a finer yarn, the thick Instant Gratification yarn and small needles pay tribute to the solidity of materials explored in Brancusi’s work, resulting in a long-lasting, hard-wearing, handsome, sturdy sock. The yarn tag calls for US4-6, but I needed 64 stitches for the pattern and didn’t want a baggy sock. That’s right, some DK-weight knit on US2/3.0mm!

Special thanks to the following inspiration peeps:

• To Cat Bordhi, for demystifying sock knitting with two circulars.
• To Rachael “Yarn-a-go-go” Herron, for helping me grow and stretch my mind as a designer.
• To Sile, of Knit One One for hosting and getting my butt into Rachael’s class.
• To Eunny Jang, for sharing the joys of traveling stitches in her Bayerische socks (now I gotta finish mine!)
• To Stephanie “Yarn Harlot” Pearl-McPhee, for showing me my first eye of partridge heel and hemmed stockinette cuff
• To Vogue Knitting Magazine’s Stitchionary Volume 2, for feeding my cable habit.

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 30th, 2007 at 11:51 pm and is filed under designing, knitting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.