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.

I started knitting toe up socks based on the Amenable pattern by Hunter Hammersen. I went toe up because I only had one hank of yarn and wanted the socks to be as tall as possible. But, I’m having issues. Try to be surprised. I have an even number of stitches on the top of the sock and an even number of stitches on the bottom, but the pattern is based on a 2 stitch repeat. So, I’m trying to figure out if I want to add an extra stitch on top of the foot and have knit 1, purl 1, knit 1 OR just have the pattern start on a knit 1 and end on a purl 1*….Neither option is really sitting well with my mild OCD.


Then, I visited Gauge Knits and they had another skein of the yarn! I swear it wasn’t there last week. So, now, I feel like the universe is telling me to just knit the pattern as designed. What do you think?
* The pattern is actually much more fun to knit than plain old ribbing, but this seemed the easiest way to explain my quandary.

Ps. To see what others are working on, check out:
Tami’s Amis
Small Things(I just started the book, Spark (about how cardio workouts make you smarter), and it’s pretty good so far.)
Frontier Dreams