FO Week: manly socks

In July I finished some socks for my brother, the last member of my immediate family to receive a pair of handknitted socks.



Pattern: Twilight by Melissa Morgan-Oakes

Yarn: Regia 4 Ply sock yarn

Mods: I did a 1x1 rib cuff instead of p3 k1.

Notes:
As you can see from the photos, they turned out a little long. This despite the fact that I tried them on my brother before knitting the toes. Maybe he has shrinking feet, or maybe my row gauge was off so the toes turned out longer than they should have. Or maybe it has something to do with the horizonal ribbing issue, described below. Whatever. Brother says he doesn't mind, even when I offered to frog back and do the toes again. Hopefully they aren't uncomfortable in his shoes.



I won't be knitting this pattern again, mainly because the stitch pattern is not my friend. Especially for socks. There is nothing wrong with it objectively, but as it turns out this waffley stitch acts like horizontal ribbing. That may not be the technical term, but I am using it to refer to patterns with several rows of purl then several rows of knit repeating. Horizontal ribbing causes socks to contract vertically, whereas standard vertical rib (i.e. k2 p2 and the like) causes socks to contract horizontally to fit the ankles. As a result of contracting vertically, the socks always seem shorter than they are supposed to be, so knitting them seemed endless! So annoying. I didn't think of this at all before starting - I saw a relatively simple and manly stitch pattern that wasn't rib and jumped on it. Oh well. Lesson learned.