Friday, September 21, 2007

Thoughts on Izzy's

The Izzy Sock Pattern was born out of my love of Fair Isle, my need for mindless patterns, and my curse of a tight hand. These factors do not mix when it comes to sock knitting!!!

I love to work with color. I’m always surprised to see how colors interact in my knitting. But even more, I love mindless knitting. Following a Fair Isle pattern is not what I call Mindless knitting. I find that sock patterns with easy to memorize repeats of lace or cable patterns, are my favorite. I can work on them anywhere, put them down and pick them up, without skipping a beat. That is my kind of knitting!!!

Then, there is my Curse. I am a tight knitter. So I really have to pay attention when doing work that requires me to carry strands of yarn along my work (ala Fair Isle). My Fair Isle work does not stretch, at all. This isn’t exactly great for sock knitting.

So I tried to come up with a pattern to do color work where I carry the yarn behind the front of the work but would also be stretchy enough so that I could get the sock on my foot.
The pattern is a simple K2 P2 rib all the way to the toe. So the stretch is great on these socks. And the 2 color work is completely mindless. You really don’t even need the pattern if you follow this simple recipe.

Stitch pattern:
Always K in Knit stitches and P in Purl Sts.
Carry the non-working yarn behind your work throughout the sock.

Color pattern
The color pattern is a 2 row repeat, so every 2 rows the color pattern will change.
The color work rows are :
1st 2 rows: 2 color work
2nd 2 rows: single color work
Repeat.

The Single color rows are alternating main color (MC) and Complementary Color (CC) color.. So it goes 2 rows of MC, 2 rows of color work, 2 rows of CC, 2 rows of color work, back to 2 rows of MC, etc.
The 2 color rows are worked thus, always work the Knit sts in the opposite color of the previous solid color row and the purl sts in same color as the previously completed solid color row. For example, you have just finished 2 MC rows, the next row you start by K2 st in CC, P2 in MC, repeating around for 2 rows.
After you finish these 2 rows you go back to the single color row instruction. Since your last single color rows were in MC, you do the next 2 rows in CC. And so on. Really, once you do about 8 rounds (1 full repeat) the pattern is stuck in your head.

If you are the kind of person who needs a line by line pattern. Just leave a comment, and I will email it to you.

1 comment:

~Tonia~ said...

I think that it is too late in the evening to comprehend. Plus my night time cold meds are kicking in. LOL Sounds like a great pattern though.