Hot Socks

A combination of a boy tired out from the gym, the lack of available sunlight and a certain inherent inertia on my part have rather delayed the unveiling of the black socks to the world at large.

Happily I have now broken free from the chains of the dreaded cold and can now share with you all H's latest pair of socks:


See, black socks, in Regia silk so they are very nice and soft and silky, but none the less; very black.

Ok, Ok, Ok, I think you all know me well enough by now to guess that if I was knitting black socks for man sized feet there had to be a twist somewhere along the line. Mandy guessed the Windowpane socks which are stunning, and which I now have to add to the 'to knit' list, but it's a bit more tricksy than that.

These are a combined inspiration from Pink Lemon Twist's Melanie's Hot Rod Socks, and the adaptation that Caroline made. Imagine if you will, your professional business man; smart suit, crisp white shirt, appropriate tie, polished shoes and black socks.

Except, inside his shoes - the socks are on fire:



I took Melanie's chart and adapted it to fit well onto a 72st socks and cut out one of the colour changes because that's all I had in the stash.

The orange and yellow yarn is Opal and all of the yarn came from Web of Wool.

This is the first time that I've tried doing any serious amount of colour work in the round on a sock and I was a bit worried that I might over tighten the floats, or that it would just look wobbly and a bit shoddy.

As expected, this is how it looked straight off the needles:



Wobbly, the odd loose stitch and a bit rubbish - fear not though - all was saved by the marvellous intervention of my iron, a pressing cloth and the sock blockers (fulfilling their genuine purpose for once, rather than just being a photography model!)

I steamed the socks on the wool setting with a spare towel between the socks and the iron plate and then stretched and pulled from both directions to even out the stitches. Finally, the socks went onto the blockers to cool off; et voila:



Flaming feet!