fall nightMaybe it’s just me, but it seems that when knitters are passionate about socks, they are also often passionate about the way they make them. For me, my ideal sock starts at the toe, conquers the heel with a slipped stitch flap that curves from the sole of the heel to the back of the heel, has a cuff at least as long as the foot, and ends in some kind of ribbing or other stitch that will keep it in an upright position. I also insist on making them both at the same time to avoid the dreaded second sock syndrome that I know would be an affliction for me as I drown my senses in all of the pretty sock yarns. I don’t deviate from this formula often.fall night-4

While I would like to say that I am more experimental or trust the designer when I come across sock patterns I want to try, this way of sock knitting has been the formula my hands have been working for about 8 years now, and my brain has come to think this is the way socks are done! Really, I have a pretty high score on the Openness to Experience scale of the Big Five Personality Test, so I have to assume my stubbornness in this realm comes solely from enjoying the socks that this formula produces and wanting more of them. Plus, it’s so deeply canonized in my knitting repertoire that I feel like I could do socks with my eyes closed, and I’ve never gotten a hole in the heel of a sock for myself yet.fall night-2

Of course, I am missing out on some pretty amazing socks by being this stubborn. Many Cookie A patterns come to mind, like this one. In the meantime I usually just modify patterns with a stitch repeat to work in the formula I use. That’s just how I do socks. So, the socks pictured in this post have had a fairly predictable path if you’ve been paying attention in this post, or seen almost any other sock post of mine. I did the cuffs a bit longer than usual, mostly because I wanted to get to the larger mottled blue and white section that was the start of the toe and was my favorite bit. fall night-5I really enjoyed these socks, simple stockinette as they were, due to the patterning. This is in the first Arne and Carlos series made for Regia. I could expound for paragraphs on the joys of Regia for the bright colors that last and the socks that wear forever and ever, but that’s for another post. Suffice to say, I love this brand. So far there are at three Arne and Carlos series produced by Regia and I think the first and the third have some gems. This color is called Fall Night. I offered it up to Matt before I turned it into socks for myself. He thought they would be too girly, and since seeing them in action he’s mentioned his regrets more than once.

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