Remember how today was supposed to be the day for seaming R.I.B.? Well, yeah, that's kind of not happening. I got seduced by the call of lace.

So while R.I.B. is still sitting in pieces on the couch (it has the luxury of splaying itself about in such an untidy manner, as I have the house to myself this week), I have picked the lace pattern(s), dug out my other size 1 DPNs, swatched, and written out the pattern.


I'm trying to decide whether to chart out the lace patterns. I'm using the Flemish braid and accompanying left and right "cable" twists from the Walker book. The one downpoint of her book is the lack of charts. Gah. The good thing is that both patterns are purl on odd rows (well, knit for me, since it's in the round), which means I only have to worry myself with even rows. But the Flemish Braid is a total of 16 rows, which is kind of long to follow in non-charted form. Even worse, the twists are 10 rows each, so the patterns don't repeat in sync with each other. This means it won't be as simple to use a row counter to keep my place. The question is whether I want to take the time and effort to char them out in Excel. It might make things easier, but it would be tedious, and if I made an error (which I'd be unlikely to catch right away, as I'm not very experienced with lace), it would be a royal pain in the bottom.

Well, regardless of the charting issue, I am quite pleased with my general progress in the planning of these socks. Here is my extensive pattern writeup. It's mostly for my own benefit, but if any of you feel like taking a gander at it, let me know if you catch anything that looks out of whack. I changed my mind multiple times about stitch number (how much ease to have in various parts), how many stitches to put on the heel flap, and the best way to divide stitches between needles. So it's quite possible that my numbers are off somewhere, from all of those change. But I'm pretty sure I got it all straightened out.

using twisted German cast-on, loosely cast on 109 stitches
distribute stitches over 4 needles, and join in the round

knit one row, redistributing the stitches as follows:
n1 - 29
n2 - 29
n3 - 29
n4 - 22

start lace and stockinette pattern:
n1: k22, left twist
n2: k2, flemish braid, k2
n3: right twist, k22
n4: k22

continue following the lace and stockinette pattern for about 1"

decrease section:
decrease two stitches every other row 6 times (12 sts decreased in total) Do so by doing a k2tog or ssk on either side of the twists, leaving 2 stitches of stockinette buffer.

continue knitting the lace and stockinette pattern until the leg is about 6"

knit across the first 10 sts of n1; put the remainder of n1 stitches on n2; turn

heel flap - purl back across those 10 sts, across all of n4 (slip first insted of purling), and then across 10 sts of n3 (put remaining n3 sts onto n2)

k1 sl1 (knitwise) across

continue as set across 48 heel flap stitches until flap is about 2"

turn heel -
knit across 28 sts, ssk, k1, turn
sl1 purlwise, knit to 1 st. before gap, ssk, k1 turn
sl 1 purlwise, purl to 1 st. before gap, p2 tog, p1, turn
continue until all sts have been worked, ending with p-side row, and 28 sts remaining

gusset - pick up and knit an appropriate number of stitches along side of gusset, continuing only center part of lace pattern when you get to the instep stitches.

do gusset decreases every other round (k2tog or ssk 1 stitch in from end of needle) until there are about 77 stitches in total

continue with foot until it is about 7.5" long. Figure out toe shaping from there, based on stockinette row gauge.