Mail Call!

Thanks again for all the nice comments you've sent about my socks!  I do have a new pair of the needles, but I've been sorting and packing in order to get our house ready to list for sale and I just haven't gotten much done on them.

I got a few new question that I thought I address before the weekend!

1.  Missy Joon asks, "Could you tell me the trick to making a match with patterning yarn?"  Here's what I do...I knit all of my socks two at a time, so I divide any large skeins into two equal balls with my ball winder and my scale.  Then, I pull out the yarn from both balls until I get a match, usually when one color changes to the next.  I snip the yarn at the same place and start both cast-ons from there.  On the Opal socks I just finished, I'd have had to waste an entire color repeat and I was too lazy to do that, so I just started them wherever.

2.  Mary asks, "I made my first pair of socks for the Knitting Olympics: 2 socks on 2 circs at the same time. They were a toe-up pattern offered for free by KnitPicks using their Parade yarn. I loved the self-striping stuff but didn't like the pattern/techniques featured. The toes had little rectangles at the end and the heel had a circular decrease which looked like nipples when they were done! Can you please recommend a good, next pattern for me... preferably 2 socs on 2 circs, toe-up with short row shaping for the heel? My thanks!"  I haven't knitted toe ups in a while, so I went and looked it up.  Let's talk about the toe first.  This pattern uses a half-hitch cast-on to get the stitches on the needle and then you knit across them and then pick up stitches on the other side.  This looks like the same cast on from here.  There are several other toe-up cast ons that I know of...
         Figure 8 cast on this is the only toe-up cast on I've ever used.  I liked it fine, but I know there are plenty of folks who don't like it.
         Turkish cast on.  Looks pretty easy!  Two tutorials I found in a quick search...here...and here.
         Queen Kahuna's Aloha cast on.  I've heard a lot about this one, too, but I haven't tried it either.  Link to the PDF file here.
Now, we'll address the heels.  This pattern calls for an afterthought heel that you run the tail of the yarn through when you have seven stitches left.  No wonder they were pointy!!  I've used afterthought heels before, and I like the bull's-eye effect you'd get with the Knit Picks yarn, but I've always just Kitchenered the end of the heel when I had 16 or 18 stitches left.  The only other heel I've used with a toe-up sock is just a standard short-row heel.  The only other pattern I found specifically for two at once is this one by Barb, figure 8 cast on, short-row heel, Magic Loop.  It can be found here.  There are other heel choices, the toe-up pattern at Socknitters.com calls for a reverse Dutch heel.  Here's one from Mary, the Socknitters Mom, which uses a regular flap and turn heel.

3.  Monique asks, "My husband doesn't like the toes on the socks, he wants the kind you find on the store bought socks....where the grafting is done on the top of the sock in the middle of the toes...do you know what this is called? where I can find directions/patterns for this?"  As a matter of fact, I do!  It's called a short-row toe.  You can do one like Wendy's toe-up sock here and you don't have to graft at all, or here's a pattern from Michelle that you can do top down and graft on top of the toes. 

As always, drop a comment if you have anything to add to these questions!  Have a great weekend!