Finished: Plain Hummingbirds Socks

Another pair of socks. Done. I know, where did these bad boys come from?? I didn't even blog about starting them or even mentioned once that these even existed. I had cast on for these the second after I had finished the Sweet Monkey socks. Gotta uphold my goal of always having a pair of socks, a shawl, and a cardigan on the needles, right?

Anyhoo, I used the Yarn Harlot's Plain Vanilla Sock Recipe cause I wanted the colours of the yarn to shine rather than the pattern. I feel like I haven't knit enough socks yet to fully understand what I'm doing to knit without a pattern, and I have yet to knit a plain pair of socks to actually know what I'm doing without a pattern. So I thought the Yarn Harlot's pattern was a good jumping off point since it's still step-by-step and yet vague enough that you can totally interpret the pattern any way you wish. This was my first time knitting a pair of socks that wasn't written with a row by row account of what you should do. It kinda threw me for a loop!

Again, I didn't do a gauge swatch and had cast on 64 stitches before knitting 2" of 2x2 ribbing. Then it was straight up stockinette in the round. How easy peasy is that?? Before starting these socks I did a Ravelry search for projects using this colourway (the yarn by the way, is SweetGeorgia Yarns Tough Love Sock in a club colourway called "Hummingbirds"...hence the name of this project). The one and only project showed a wonderful striping effect. It was gorgeous! Unfortunately my first sock didn't stripe. It did some weird pooling.

Since I like to knit my socks 2 at a time, I started the second sock with the end from inside the cake. Guess what? It striped! I was very tempted to rip the first sock and wait to knit it when I finished the second sock but decided against it. This pair will be fraternal. So what? I was never one to like matchy-matchy socks anyways.

I kept trying on the socks as I was knitting along and was starting to worry that they were going to be too tight. How weird it was when I had grafted the toe on the first sock to discover that the fit was totally fine. It was snug enough that it won't slouch after a few hours of wear, but loose enough that it wasn't cutting off my circulation.

For the heel flap I decided to try something different from the slip stitch heel that I've used on the last 2 pairs and went with an Eye of Partridge heel - which seems like something fancy shmancy and all difficult like, but really it was a matter of being 1 stitch different from the slip stitch heel. The Eye of Partridge isn't as stretchy as the slip stitch heel but it definitely has a thickness to it that I like.

I started decreasing for the toe way too soon and had to do an extra decrease and round before grafting the toes, which to me look a little too "pointy" on the foot for my liking. I like the outcome of the socks, but I could have definitely added more length to the leg, foot, and the heel flap. I think the socks fit a little on the smaller side and hope that with wear they'll stretch out a bit. For now they're staying on my sock blockers in hopes that they'll block out a little bigger...

Sock details:

Pattern: Plain Vanilla Sock Recipe by the Yarn Harlot (aka Stephanie Pearl-McPhee), this was in her book Knitting Rules!

Yarn: SweetGeorgia Yarns Tough Love Sock

Colour: Hummingbirds (this was the August 2010 installment of the sock yarn club)

Needles: Knit Picks Nickel Plated circulars in 2.25mm (US 1)

Ravelry Link: MisoCraftyKnits' Plain Hummingbirds