Vym

I am excited and proud to announce that I have a pattern in the Spring/Summer 2010 issue of the Twist Collective! It is a sock pattern named Vym, and can be found here (on the Twist website), and here (on Ravelry.)



These are top-down stranded colorwork socks, with a slip stitch heel flap and (somewhat unusual) gusset.

The colorwork pattern is my own. It was inspired by the Komi style of patterning that Charlene Schurch uses to great effect in her mittens book. I love this type of patterning so much that when I first got her book I made up a bunch of charts roughly in the same style, just for fun. The colorwork you see on the Vym socks is a slight twist on one of those earlier charts. (The original chart looked like it had hearts in it, which was a bit twee for what I was going for. So I tweaked a few stitches to give them more of an abstract look.)



As with my Francie socks, I decided to do the gusset shaping at the bottom of the foot. I did this for two reasons. I thought the socks would look way too busy if I had the stripes on the sole and gusset decreased away on the side of the sock, right next to the main colorwork pattern. I also think it looks plain old pretty to have the stripes merge at the bottom of the sock. These socks don't have arch shaping like the Francie socks do, again to keep them from looking too busy and frantic.

I had a great experience working with the editors at the Twist Collective. They are smart, kind, have a great eye, and are hard working. I hope to work with them again in the future, the next time I have a pattern idea that I think is good enough for the magazine. (In fact, I happen to have a swatch sitting right next to my computer, just waiting to be written up into a pattern proposal.)

Getting the socks from idea to publication was a long process. The socks started out very similar to what you see here, but with very different colors:



I originally swatched in ShiBui sock yarn, which is a very similar yarn base to the yarn I ended up using (Unwind Yarns and Gems Merlot Twist Sock.) Both yarns are 2 ply merino fingering weight yarns in very subtle semisolids. I admit that I still really adore the purple and green that I originally swatched in. I ended up with different yarn and different colors for a few reasons. I know that my color combo is difficult to photograph well. It also didn't fit with the mood of the sock section they had planned. And of course, Unwind Yarn and Gems is an advertiser in this issue of Twist. I still might do some colorwork with my original ShiBui colors, but all in all this was a great opportunity to work with two new-to-me sock yarns. A win all-around!

Another difference between the swatch socks and the final sample socks is the gusset. I was all proud of myself for thinking that I would do more frequent gusset decreases, to make up for the more "square" gauge of this type of colorwork. I think I tried a 2/3 ratio (two decrease rounds per every three rounds), which of course ended up being too severe of a slope. Whoops! That's what swatching's for, right? The math part of my brain still says that the 2/3 ratio should work better than the 1/2 ratio, but the 1/2 ratio really does work, even with funky colorwork row gauges.

The other day I realized how long it's been since I've published a new pattern. I couldn't be happier that this new pattern is published in this issue of the Twist Collective. It's really a spectacular issue. I'm not usually someone who loves spring and summer issues of knitting magazines, because I'm a wool girl at heart. But there is a lot in there to love, and I couldn't be happier to be a very tiny fish in a large and sparkling ocean.




(Ooh, and I almost forgot! What does Vym mean, you ask? When all other creative inspiration fails, it's Wikipedia to the rescue. I had no idea what to name these things, so looked up Komi in Wikipedia. There was a list of rivers that flow through the Komi region of Russia, and I thought Vym sounded best. Short, sweet, and it would make an awesome Scrabble word if it were allowed...)