the Soxophone Player

Here’s a pair of socks I knit for a friend with a large narrow foot.

The main colour is Fortissima Mexiko Color 9064, Taiga which my friend had in her stash.

The accent on the hem tops is Kogiu KPPPM.  I don’t know the colour number – it’s a lime green and was a small leftover from another project.  There wasn’t enough to to my usual 40 row double hem top, so I went with 30 rows.

To narrow the foot, I switched from 72 stitches in the leg to a 3:1 mock rib on top of the foot, beginning about 15 rows before the heel.

I like this colourway – nice blend of deeper blues and greens punched up by little bits of lime green that also tie in with the Koigu tops.

I hadn’t seen this particular yarn from Fortissima before – my friend brought it back from a trip to Holland.  It seemed to be a finer yarn than other Fortissimas I use.

Time for another ‘special project’: Thigh High stockings in a fine stripe pattern. I call them Baroque Thigh Highs.

For this pair of socks I am using Fortissima Socka from stash:

• 3 x 50g balls of Black #1002
• 1 x 100g ball of #2057 mittelgrau meliert
• 1 x 100 g ball of #2055 grau-meliert (the lighter of the two greys in the photo)

This may seem like a LOT of yarn for one pair of socks.

It is.

My pattern is quite inefficient: my actual use of yarn was 110 grams of black, and 51 grams of each of the two greys for a pair of size Medium +.  I’ll be making several pairs in several sizes, so its no matter, but if I were making only one pair I’d surely fiddle with the pattern to sneak back the greys to 50g!

I knit these M+ thigh highs on two cylinders. I started the tops on the 100 needle cylinder in a 9:1 mock rib at quite a loose tension. After the hem top, with needles replaced, I knit 100 needles in stockinette for three repeats of my colour pattern: 5 rows middle grey, 5 rows lighter grey, 5 rows black. Then I knit some scrap yarn and run the topper off the cylinder and rehang it on the 72 needle cylinder.

To rehang 100 stitches onto 72 needles I put every third and fourth stitch on every third needle, and in addition I hang an extra stitch on the first of three needles at 12 o’clock, 9 o’clock, and 6 o’clock.  That evenly spreads the 100 stitches.

The pattern is based on my earlier Thigh Highs pattern, except I adapted to make 5 row stripes with three colours instead of 15 rows stripes in two colours.

The thin stripes take  a bit longer time, given all the colour changes. And there are serious ends:

How would you accessorize a pair of thigh highs like this?

What a hoot!

This is Fortissima-Socka Vino/Schwarz #9042 from their Best of Mexico series.

I call it Purple Tony.

The reds/earth tones version, #9044 I always called Tony the Tiger, so this one became Purple Tony…. easier to remember than #9042!

The knee socks are size XL, and are knit with the 84 cylinder on the Legare 400.

As with most of my knee sock knitting I started these with an 80 row mock rib hem top, but on this pair a 5:1 rather than my usual 3:1. I replaced the missing needles and picked up their stitches just before hanging the hem.

I started with a loose tension, working my way up to a regular tension for 4 ply by the time I got to the pre-heel, which worked out to be  about 160 rows.

At the beginning of the pre-heel I went back to a mock rib, this time doing 3:1 on the top of the foot only, which meant removing 10 needles, leaving 74 for the pre-heel and foot. I replaced those needles 5 rows before the end of the XL foot (makes kitchener easier).

I didn’t have a heck of a lot left from 2 x 100g balls on this project.

The 84 cylinder is perfect for knitting knee socks for man-legs with a fingering weight yarn.  Even my tree trunk calves don’t over stretch the stitches.

I haven’t tried this with the 100 needle cylinder yet, and I will, but I’m guessing it will be either more suited to a lace weight yarn, or will need a rib of some sort running the length of the sock.

The yarn isn’t a new colourway – it was a re-release and I’m very happy Schoeller and Stahl (owners of Fortissima) came out with the Best of Mexico series. So many great yarns are short releases – very frustrating!

I didn’t know what else to call these! But I knit them with sock yarn from 3 different Euro labels, so Euro Knee Socks it is!

Staying with size Medium + (until the bin is full)….knit with the 72 needle cylinder on the Verdun 47.

The Black and Dark Grey are Schoeller & Stahl’s Fortissima Socka colours #1002 schwartz (black) and #1059 anthrazit (coal).

The black, white, grey, pink patterned yarn is Lana Grossa Mielenweit # 7710.

And the hot pink feet are Opal Uni #1412.

I guess if I can knit bright colours to sustain me through cloudy days, I can knit battleship gray on a bright, beautiful sunny day.

These are Schoeller & Stahl Fortissima Socka 100 in colour #2059 – Anthrazit Meliert (mottled dark gray).

75% wool  25%  nylon; 420m/100g

This pair is size Large, knit with the 72 needle cylinder on the Verdun 47.

You can’t see it – at least I can’t – even if you click the photo larger – but this is another pair done with a 1:1 top, Eye of the Partridge square heel, and gussets.

The dark gray, to my surprise, wasn’t any more difficult to work with than black. I thought the stitches would be impossible to see.