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.

First, US women’s shoe sizes are BS. When I make socks for the dimensions I find online, they don’t seem to fit the matching live feet. This time, I decided to find someone with similar sized feet to the giftee and then talk them into trying on the first sock. Thankfully, even though this sock fit me (size 7.5 shoe), the yarn is just stretchy because my size 6 friend declared them a perfect fit.

Second, while Meghan was admiring the sock, she noticed that maybe I hadn’t woven in the end? but there was very little tail left? Sons of biscuits! I thought I’d done my usual method of knitting in the tail and for some reason I did not and I snipped the cast on tail off way way way too short. So, I carefully wove a bit of yarn through the cast on, tied a discreet knot and will weave in the longer tail…..tomorrow.


On to the second sock!

To see what others are working on, check out:
Tami’s Amis
Small Things (I’m still listening to “Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us”.)
Frontier Dreams