The Watson Sock Goes To The Beach

At Cafe Blue in Volente, TX. It’s a gorgeous 90F today — we had a cold front come through yesterday. This is Texas in September, folks.

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The Watson Sock Goes To The Movies

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Fleegle Heel Success!

Now that I’ve overcome that hurdle, I should be looking for test knitters sometime next week. If anyone’s interested, let me know! (The pattern will be free, so you’ll just get first crack at it.)

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I can haz halp?

Ok, so I’ve hit a snag with the Watson socks. I’m working them toe up, because yardage can sometimes be tight when knitting for a guy with big feet and I want the ability to bind off whenever I run out of yarn. Divide your skein by weight before beginning, and it’s a painless way to ensure matching socks.

The heel is giving me fits, though. Big guy feet need some sort of gusset, so a purely short row heel is out. I first tried Cat Bordhi’s master heel from her New Pathways book, but if I can avoid wraps it would be nice, since not everybody is comfortable doing them. Plus, the heel turn for a 38 stitch sole (plus 18 gusset sts on each side) added so much length to the sock that it became too long in the foot.

My other constraint is the 12 row pattern repeat. I would like to come out of the heel turn able to start a new repeat, which means I can only adjust the start of the gusset increases, heel turn, etc in 1 inch increments (my gauge is about 10 rows per inch).

I really like Katherine Misegades’ nonstop heel, which I actually encountered first in one of my favorite sock patterns, Anne Campbell’s Show-Off Stranded Socks. Long story slightly less long – I can’t adapt that one to my toe-up sock.

I’ve never worked the Fleegle heel before, but it seems like a blend of the nonstop heel and the Cat Bordhi heel. Fleegle wants a set number of gusset increases based on the stitch count, though, which I think would be 19 gusset sts per side for a 76 stitch sock (her chart doesn’t even go this high). I don’t want people to have to do math to knit these socks, though, which means I need exactly 16 gusset stitches on each side.

So, my tl;dr question is this: are the charted numbers of gusset stitches critical to the Fleegle heel, or will the general directions work regardless of the numbers?

I’ve already worked this sock’s heel twice and my CTH possum yarn is shedding like crazy on my sweaty hands, so if I had a predictor of success before knitting it for a third time, that would be really awesome. If anyone is very familiar with heels, especially the Fleegle heel, I’ve got email and AIM and that Google chat thingie and would love help figuring this out.

My guess is that the number isn’t critical, and is instead meant to be a math-less shortcut to automatically making a gusset of approximately the right size based on stitch count. I think I need a bit of time with another project and an amaretto sour or two before I tackle it again, though. Who’d have guessed my stranded argyle socks would count as the “brainless” knitting so quickly?

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Sneak Preview

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Elementary!

ETA: My Watson Sock pattern is now available here.

I watched Stephen Moffat’s Sherlock this morning (awesome show; highly recommended), and now I really want to knit Watson’s sweater.

Nevermind that I’ve not yet knitted a pullover, or that Mr. Texturedknitter would not wear such a thing even if I knitted it successfully. What I am good at is replicating stitch patterns from a picture. I’m also good at socks — I could plug these in to my favorite sock construction and make a pair of Watson socks, no problem. Actually, I should do that… I have some Cascade Heritage in a nice tweedy gray….

Ahem. Anyway, I figured there might be experienced sweater knitters out there who would like to take the charts and plug them into their favorite sweater construction, so I’ve analysed the sweater here. Parentheses are timestamps during the show, in case anyone is nerdy enough to want to check my work since the pixels in the screencap don’t give enough detail for you to really see anything except the cables.

Elementary! Watson Sweater
What I like best about this sweater is that it’s a citified version of an Aran. It has texture, but not too much. And unlike true Aran patterns, this one is dead simple to keep track of — the two charts are the same number of rows, and the cables all get crossed on the same rows.

It’s a crew-neck pullover, grafted at the shoulders, with set-in sleeves and side seams. The ribbed crew-neck collar is picked up and knit 3 rows st st before beginning 2×2 ribbing.

(41:12) Centered on the body is a motif of flying geese on a stockinette field, with a few rows of st st between each motif. In the adjacent cable patterns there are two cable crosses per flying geese motif.

(49:20) On either side of the center panel is a set of three cables, all with left crosses (picked up from the front, if you’re cabling without a needle). The crosses are on the same row for all three cables, but the center cable is narrower than the outer two.

For front and back of sweater, center the flying geese chart on the body and then alternate the cable and geese charts moving outwards. The edges of the body should have either a partial or full cable chart depending on desired width.

(58:36) The sleeves have a flying geese chart centered, with cables on either side. The machine-knitted original has a repeat of the flying geese on either side of that, but it’s the side of the sleeve that’s against the body, and for shaping purposes it would be easier to use st st at the edges instead.

Sleeves have a 3″ ribbed cuff that can be worn rolled up, and the body has a 4″ ribbed hem. The transition from the hem to the charted body is smooth, so the hem ribbing should be blocked open before seaming.

If anyone actually makes a sweater based on this, I’d love to hear about it and see pictures!

As I’m writing this, we’ve had a nice line of thunderstorms move through the area. I’m really glad that the predicted dry spell — d’oh, lost power there for a sec, thank the FSM for auto-saves — produced by the La Niña effect hasn’t settled in yet. We could use more rain to fill the reservoirs, not to mention getting all the way through July with no triple digit days so far. Storm fronts move through so quickly that you have to be quick if you want to take a picture.

Next up: making lace patterns from the wallpaper at 221B Baker St. 😛

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