Vacation Socks

 

Hey, I actually finished something.  Actually I finished these a week or two ago but have been just tooooo busy to take a photo and post.

A pair of socks I am calling my "Vacation Socks":  I started them on Spring Break in March 2013 when we went to Moab, Utah, and then took them with me on a cruise in June 2013.  I think I knit on them just a bit on the plane rides between Denver, Colorado & Fort Lauderdale, Florida.  Nope, not a lot of knitting took place on the cruise ship. 

 

I finally finished these in mid-June 2013. They are just plain socks but I switched up the decreases.  A gal at the knit shop was showing me some socks she was making and she said the pattern called for doing the decreases opposite from what one would ordinarily do and it had a really nice look.

 

If you are familiar with top down sock knitting, after knitting the heel flap and turning the heel, you pick up and knit stitches on both sides of the heel flap. Then you complete the decrease rounds for the gusset.  For my socks, I was following instructions HERE for Susan B. Anderson's instructions called "How I Make My Socks".  

The portion of the instructions read like this:

Decrease rounds for the gusset:
Rnd 1: knit all stitches

Rnd 2:

Needle 1: knit to the last 3 stitches, k2tog, knit 1 stitch

Needle 2 (instep): knit

Needle 3: knit 1 stitch, ssk, knit to the end of the needle

abbreviation:

ssk – slip 2 stitches separately as if to knit, knit the slipped stitches together through the back loops

Repeat rounds 1 and 2 until there are 16 stitches on each of Needles 1 and 3, and 32 stitches still remain on Needle 2.

 

 

But on my socks, I did the OPPOSITE for the decreases. Where it says "k2tog", I completed an "ssk"; where it says "ssk", I completed a "k2tog".  For the toe decreases, I also did OPPOSITE decreases.

 

I like how these socks turned out with the OPPOSITE decreases.  I have to say though... the first sock I knit on the Moab trip was knit rather loosely and the second sock I knit on the cruise ship trip was much more tightly knit.  I was more stressed out about the cruise ship trip since that kind of travel was all new to me.  Hmmm?  Maybe that has something to do with it. 

The yarn used in these socks is called Zitron Trekking (XXL).