Green Socks

The first of the two pairs of socks to come out of my home dyed yarn. I improvised a simple toe-up pattern with two six-stitch cables on the front - the yarn is busy enough and any complicated texture would be lost in the colorful patches.

Pattern: Green Socks, 60 sts, toe-up
Yarn: Alize Superwash, 50 g, home dyed
Needle: 2.5 mm
Time to knit: one week

For the heel I used the instructions in this free general pattern by Wendy D. Johnson - she has so many wonderful and free sock patterns!
I like how it forms the heel, very neat and without holes and the pattern has the calculations for 7 different sock sizes, so it's very flexible and universal.

I finished the cuff with one row of double rib and Elizabeth Zimmerman's invisible bind-off, which is really stretchy and beautiful.

The socks are meant for Gaby, but as today the temperatures in Sofia exceeded 20C, she just posed with them for a couple of minutes and took them down, claiming it too hot for wool socks. Oh, well, there'll be other winters to come :)

Toe-up Socks

I had a skein of brick 50 g Alize Superwash I intended to test, so I knit a pair of socks. This is only my second pair of socks and this time I wanted to try the toe-up method and to use up all of my yarn.

Pattern: Cabley Goodness Top-Down-Toe-Up Socksby Erin Case 
Yarn: Alize Superwash 50 g, color 433
Needle: 3 mm, 2.5 mm rib
Time to knit: 5 days

For these socks I used the magic loop method instead of DPNs and it worked fine, mostly due to the purl stitch, where I could hide the unevenness of my transitions from one needle to the other :)
The pattern is very well written and easy for a beginner like me, my only concern with these socks is that the heel is not reinforced and might easily tear.

Notes: My gauge was 25 sts x 35 rows, so I reduced the stitches by 0.78 ratio.
Cast on 8 sts and increased to 56 sts, knit in pattern for 45 rows, heel flap for 15 rows,
heel turn - knit 16, SSK, K1, turn,
slip, purl 5, p2tog, p1, turn and so on until all stitches have been worked.
Ended with 16 sts. Picked up 9 stitches each side of the heel flap for the gusset.
Decreased to 56 sts and continued knitting until I knit up the entire skein.
Rib 1x1 on 2.5 mm needle, invisible bind-off using this tutorial:
http://crankygrrrrrl.wordpress.com/2007/01/15/k1p1-invisi...