Hello! I hope you are having a lovely and peaceful Christmas Eve. I had a really relaxing week with my daughter at home and I’ve been preparing as my son is coming home for a couple of days to spend Christmas. I managed to sleep late this morning (very unusual) but the mornings are so dark. I had intended to get on with my Blueberry Waffle Socks for my Christmas Eve cast-on before this, but I’m determined to get at least a few rounds of cuff done.

As I said in Podcast 45, I’m planning to make Blueberry Waffle socks using my own hand dyed Sock yarn in the Blueberry Bites Back colourway, with one of the vibrant sock minis. I’ve chosen to use the Hot Teal. I have a couple more skeins of each of the colours and I’ll be adding them to the shop just after Christmas.

Blueberry waffle socks – the planning stage

Before I could start, I wanted to write out my plan. As several of you have commented, the Blueberry Waffle socks in the original pattern by Sandy Turner on Ravelry are in DK weight yarn. I’m not troubled by this as I understand the maths of sock knitting quite well – its the actual needle action that is the tricky part! But I did want to make sure that I’d thought it all through before I set off like a bull at a gate.

This first blog post will be one of a small series as I work through how I’m going to do each section. I’ve written out an overall plan, with stitch counts, but I’ll be checking that it all works as I get going with the knitting. The pattern is quite an old one and the website is archived so I have no idea how to contact Sandy to let her know I was doing this. As her original pattern was free, and my adaption will be free too, I can’t see there would be a problem.

This morning I wound my sock yarn into a cake – its looking really good… I wanted subtle colour variations so that the pattern in the Blueberry waffle socks was still visible and I think that its going to look fab. I hand wound the mini – changing colour in a sock is something that I find tricky, but at least its a good contrast so I can see what I’m doing!

When I get to the gusset I’ll be using my SSK and K2T markers so that I get the SSK and K2tog decreases in the right place. I won’t need them for a bit, so I have plans to make some special ones in lilac faux pearls – the nearest thing I have to blueberries.

I’ve already made a marker for the start of my round with one pearl and a snowflake charm, and I’ve gone for a gold sparkly snowflake as my progress keeper. My socks will l live in my sugar skull bag, which I made last year (don’t look too closely at the sewing!) and my notions are going to be in this lovely house bag that was gifted to me by Clarisabeth of the Crochet Cakes podcast. Isn’t it grand?

Blueberry waffle socks in fingering – what stitch count?

If you have joined in with the Sockalong over at the blog Winwick Mum run by Christine, you will know that all socks are made to a formula. The stitch count for the cuff and leg is halved at the heel. Half the stitches are left on a spare needle while the other half are worked into a heel flap and turn. Knitting on the front of the sock then resumes in the round and the extra stitches around the heel flap and turn are picked up. Regular decreases through the gusset then take the stitch count back down to the original number and the foot is worked until its long enough for whatever foot size you want. The toe decreases shape the end of the sock and you then finish off with Kitchener stitch so you don’t have a seam at the end.

The number of stitches in the round for a fingering weight sock varies only slightly between a women’s sock and a man’s. Women’s socks are generally 56 – 64 stitches, while a man’s sock is maybe 68-72 stitches. Its the length of the leg and the foot that makes a man’s sock much more time consuming to make.

Your actual stitch count also depends on your needle size. As I’m using a 2mm needle, I’m going to make a 64 stitch sock this time. I don’t want it to be too tight but I don’t want it to hang off my foot either. From the other pairs I’ve made (not many!) I am guestimating this is about right.

So my cast on will be for 64 stitches and the cuff will be a 2×2 rib:

*K2, P2 to end

I’m going to make my cuff in my main colour of sock yarn (I’m using the contrast for the heels and toes). I’m aiming to make it 3cm deep, which will be about 14 rounds.

I always knit socks with a small circular and this time, I’ve giving the Addi Sockenwunder needle a try. I find this so easy compared to DPNs or magic loop. However, I do use my DPNs for the heel flap and turn (just working with 2 as a pair of knitting needles) and then I use two small circulars to finish the toe decreases. You just can’t decrease down far enough with a single circular needle.

Blueberry waffle socks; the stitch pattern

The original pattern by Sandy Turner has a four row pattern repeat:

• Row 1: Knit all stitches
• Row 2: *K2, P2 to end
• Row 3: Knit all stitches
• Row 4: K2, P2 to end

After I’ve finished my cuff, I’m going to leave my marker for the start of the round in place and work these four rows 15 times so that my leg is 60 rows deep. Once I’m underway, I might change this a bit as I don’t want my sock to be too long.

After working the heel flap and turn and gusset decreases (that will be in a post coming in the next few days all about the maths and stitch counts), I’ll work the foot with the Blueberry waffle stitch pattern at the front, and plain knit stitches for the underside.

This is going to be a bit of an adventure, and if you want to join in with the Blueberry waffle pattern but are unsure of how to use the pattern in a fingering weight yarn, I hope my notes will be useful.

Have a fantabulous day tomorrow, and I hope you get everything you’ve wished for xxx Kathryn

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