Thursday, November 19, 2009

Slippers into Socks

These slippers are often seen on knitting sites and knitting books and are kind of a puzzle to make. See these directions which are in Finnish, but the picture tells it all.
Are you back yet?
Looks simple here shown in parts, but really does anyone really want to be sewing these together?
Why can't we just knit them in one piece?
So that question got under my skin today and I had to make them without having to sew squares together. While I was at it, I thought why can't I make the same pattern into a sock?

IT WORKED!!

I kept trying it on as each mitered diamond was added and knew from my recent mitered mittens how to make a tube from these units. But when it came to the heel I had to go on faith that everything would be molded to the shape of my foot. Feet are not square, yet all the parts of this sock are. Knitting is just amazing to me.

This Side view shows a pretty shallow heel, yet it does gain stretch from the adjacent side diamonds. The diamonds for the ankle are partnered with mitered triangles front and back, and then the cuff is picked up from that flat top part. I used these several yarns and did not cut one thread. I know I will not be using this as an actual garment, so I can unravel these and knit them with the good yarn that I do plan to wear.

Since I had the squares from my mitered mitten study lying around, I started with those and just kept adding squares, picking up stitches from the previous square. Looking at the pictures of the slippers above told me when and where to pick up stitches to make the heel.

The underside of the sock.
Pattern: This is a study and uses worsted weight wool, size 5 dpns and is based on a 25 stitch mitered square. The gauge is 3.5"on the diagonal and 2.5" as the base of the square. (Square and diamond are the same thing in this case). See this pattern for the directions and use the pictures above for the placement of each square.

10 comments:

  1. Melody, you are driving me nuts ! !
    Your are the most creative knitter on this planet without a doubt ! !
    I did finish my neckwarmer [remember the first one in this series of creativity? The simple k, k, k into a triangle????] and here you are on your umpteenth knit project.
    You are a wonder . . . .

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  2. Your engineering talents are fantastic, Melody! I love watching you work out all of these (so I don't have to, LOL!).Thanks for the inspiration!Amazing...

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  3. Great slippers. How about knitting them larger and felting them?? You've inspired me to give it a try.

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  4. Anonymous1:13 PM

    I thought you might like to know about the TV series about textile art, free on line :-

    www.talkingthreads.co.uk

    Check it out and forward to everyone you know who loves fabric!

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  5. You crack me up! What is life if not a puzzle... good thing for you because you love a good puzzle!

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  6. thank you for your post

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  7. Anonymous3:24 AM

    nice post. thanks.

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  8. I suppose everyone must browse on this.

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  9. I can't see how to print the pattern out Help please

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Hello,
So nice of you to drop by. I love your comments, and if you would really like a reply, please email me at fibermania at g mail dot com