Pattern: Popped by Hunter Hammersen (I’ll let ya’ll know when the pattern is out.)

This pattern is not super stretchy, so you’ll want to try a sock on after one leg chart repeat to make sure you can get it over your heel. Don’t try it on after just the cuff ribbing. That’s a rookie mistake…that I totally made.

Yarn: Knit Picks Stroll Tonal

These are mostly wool; I can block more room into them. (Please don’t point out that “That’ll block out.” is NOT the voice of reason)

Colorway: Spring

I’m not a huge fan of how this yarn feels, given that I like my socks on the softer side, but the colorway got A LOT of compliments and I do love it when people admire my knitting.

Needles: Started with 2.25mm Sig. Arts DPN’s but the yarn was 1% splitty, and the cuff was kind of big, so I switched to 2.0mm wooden needles.


This is where you realize why I don’t sound more worried. I have a plan.

I know a knitter who is the Jackie Chan of blocking. I knit fine looking socks, and sometimes they go off for a wee vacation and come back looking like movie stars…and if her blocking magic doesn’t fix these puppies, they’ll be sacrificed on the alter of the 100 sock challenge without a second thought because as I said, several people were admiring them.

Ya’ll know I love a Plan B.

While knitting green socks for Hunter Hammersen, there was a moment I fracking hated them. Not because the pattern is poorly written, but because I could NOT for the life of me remember the difference between a make one left and a make one right.

I see a \ on a chart and I immediately think ssk (you can draw an S out of a \). I see a / and immediately k2tog (you can draw a K out of a /, kind of).

I could not, for the life of me, see a y or a flipped y and think anything other than “crap, I have to look up the make ones again”…..and to be clear, I wasn’t having to look it up once a row. I was having to look it up for every. single. make one.

Finally, almost to the heel of the second sock I thought, “this is bat guano, there has to be a way to remember this” and I stopped knitting until I figured out the backwards y looks kind of like a B which tells me to pick up the ladder from the Back and knit through the front. (This is a M1R because the little line is off to the right.)


The y looks like a backwards F so I need to pick up the ladder from the Front and knit through the back. (This is a M1L because the little line is off to the left)

Then, I knit happily ever after.