Unrelated to Books: Knitting for Christmas

This fall semester has been really busy time for me, as you can see from my activity on this blog. My Christmas break begin at the end of the second week of December and my school starts in a couple of weeks from now. I kind of picked up a new hobby for myself besides the reading — I have been knitting like crazy. I made three pairs of socks for my mom, my boyfriend’s dad and brother, and also a beanie for my boyfriend’s mom. I have noticed that my interests switch quite often because I keep doing them constantly and eventually getting bored with them. That’s also what happened with reading, so I hope I can get the enthusiasm for it back.

Hello Yellow! beanie in progress (Nurjia Silmukoita, 2019)

The first knitting project that I started with was the beanie. I found the completed model on Nurjia Silmukoita’s webpage, and she even had the instructions on English (https://nurjiasilmukoita.fi/hello-yellow/). I decided to do the bigger size of the beanie (118 stiches) because I have quite tight handwriting. The beanie has “horse shoes” which is the main pattern of the model. I repeated the purl 2, knit 12, purl 2 for the entirety of the stiches and kind of forgot the two stich pattern after the last two purls (slip one, knit one).

Finished Hello Yellow! beanie (Nurjia Silmukoita, 2019)

For me the best way to do the main pattern (horse shoe) was to take an extra needle to assist on every eighth round:

1. Purl 2,
2. Take 3 stiches to the extra needle and place the needle in back,
3. Knit 3,
4. Knit the 3 stiches from the extra needle,
5. Take 3 stiches to the extra needle and place the needle in front,
6. Knit 3,
7. Knit the 3 stiches from the extra needle

Finished socks made according to the Lankava’s (2020) model

I’m going to illustrate the usage of the extra needle better on the other patterns.

Next I knitted these socks for my boyfriend’s dad. These were quite successful in my opinion even though I hadn’t made socks in a long time. I found this model on Lankava’s (2020) website and the exact creator for them is Mirjam Ahopelto.

I started by creating 60 stiches (56 in the instructions) and knitting 1 and purling 1 for 4cm.

When the actual pattern starts, I added 4 stitches so I had 64 in total (60 in the instructions), so 16 in each needle. The 20 stich patter below repeats the 1.-4. rounds in total of 12 times, but because I had 64 stiches in total, I had to knit or purl 3 instead of 2 in some places. It didn’t ruin the pattern though!

The pattern instruction from Lankava (2020) translated to English

Making the heel of the sock:

When the pattern is done, you can move on to the heel of the sock, where you only work on half of the stiches, so 30–32 (3rd and 4th needle). You first knit the stiches on 3rd and 4th needle and after that move on the backside of the work. You repeat the 1.-2. in total of 12 times.

1. Slip 1 stich and purl the other ones (backside) and turn
2. Slip 1, knit 1, repeat and continue to the end (front side) and turn

Remember to knit the last stich even though it doesn’t fit into the pattern (for example 2 knitted stiches back to back comparing to the slip 1, knit 1) because when you turn on the backside, the first stich is always slipped, and you don’t knit or purl the stich at all if you don’t do it in the front side.

Decreasing the stiches on the heel:

When you have repeated the pattern 12 times, you divide the stiches on three needles (10+10+10 or in my case 11+10+11). You continue the same pattern but at the backside you purl until you have 1 stich at the end of the middle needle purl 2 together. Then you turn and continue the same pattern at the front side too, but slip the middle needle’s last stich and knit the next stich on the other needle. You decrease the stich by lifting the slipped stich over the knitted stich.

Illustration of the decreasing of the middle needle’s final and the second needle’s first front side stich (you can detect the holiday stress on the picked up skin around my nails, sorry about that)

When you have decreased all the stiches on the right and left needles (not the middle) you have 10 stiches left. Then you can pick up around 13–16 stiches at the both sides of the heel piece.

Decreasing stiches after the heel piece is finished:

Now you are going to work on all of the four (or five, depending how you divide your stiches) needles. Your 1st and 2nd needle are the ones that are going to continue on some of the previous pattern (the red box), and besides that, you are just going to knit normally.

The pattern that is going to be continued at the end of the sock

You are going to decrease stiches at the end of the 4th needle (this is the one before the needle that continues the pattern) by knitting two stiches together. After the 1st and 2nd needle which continue the pattern (so the 3rd needle), you slip one, knit one and lift the slipped stich over the knitted one. The decreasing of the stiches comes in every third round and until you have around 52–48 stiches depending on the total count of your stiches at the beginning.

Decreasing stiches to create the tip of the sock:

When you have decreased your total count of the stiches to 52–48, you just continue to knit until your total length of the sock is fitting for the person’s shoe size you’re doing the socks for. For example, I was doing EUR 42 (UK 9.5, US 11.5) which is 27cm in length. I continued until I had knitted around 24–25cm until I begin the decreasing of the tip (the decreasing adds couple centimeters to the total length!).

Every other round you do the slip one, knit one and lift the slipped stich over the knitted one at the beginning of the 1st needle and the 3rd needle, while also knitting two stiches together at the end of the 4th needle and the 2nd needle. By doing this, you decrease the amount of stiches per round by two. You decrease until you have around 4–6 stiches on each needle (I had more because I kind of messed up the decreasing, but I made it work). Now you’re supposed to turn the sock over so the securing of the ends doesn’t happen on the right side of the sock. You can transfer all the stiches to a safety pin so the stiches don’t have the possibility of dropping along the way. After that you transfer half of the stiches to one needle and rest of them to another and make sure that each of them has their own pair. Then you just knit the pairs together and pull the yarn through the final few stiches. Then you secure the ends and you’re done!

The three braid socks (my own model)

When getting more close to Christmas, I was in so much rush to finish the two final pairs of socks for my mom and my boyfriend’s brother. The red ones were quite simple to do actually and they are the only ones from the bunch that I figured the model on my own.

I started with the simple knit 1, purl 1 for about 4cm. Then I divided the stiches so the two needles in the front (1st and 2nd) were for the pattern and the other two (3rd and 4th) just for normal knitting. The pattern was purl 4, knit 4, purl 4, knit 8, purl 4, knit 4, purl 4, and in every eighth round I took the extra needle to assist and create the “braid” effect. There’s two little braids (4 stiches) at the sides and one big braid (8 stiches) in the middle.

Creating the braid pattern:

As you can see on the illustration below, the pattern starts as normal, with two needles. When you have knitted enough stiches to the blue needle (1. picture), you take your extra (green) needle and slip certain amount of stiches to it from the yellow needle (in the 2. picture 3 but in my three braid socks 2 or 4). The amount of stiches determine how big your braid is going to be. After you have slipped the stiches to the green needle, you knit the same amount of stiches (in this case 3) from the yellow needle to the blue needle (4.- 5. picture). Then you knit the 3 stiches from green needle and knit the rest of the stiches from the yellow needle (6. picture).

Illustration on how to do the “braid” knitting (same idea on the Hello Yellow! beanie)

For the three braid socks I continued the braid pattern throughout the whole sock. I did the heel of the sock and the decreasing of the stiches according to the Lankava’s (2020) instructions. These socks were also made to size EUR 42 feet, which made the knitting process very similar to the previous ones.

The lace socks based on Novita’s (2020) model

And finally the last pair, and definitely the most challenging ones, were a gift for my mom. She also likes to knit and is very good at it, but similarly to me, hasn’t got much experience on lace knitting. I decided to try how it goes and picked up a model for lace socks from Novita (2020). I ended up really liking the model and even though I’m not so sure if I followed it correctly, I still can see somewhat a pattern in the finished product.

First I created 56 stiches and did knit 1, purl 1 pattern for 2,5cm. This pattern, however, was different from the other ones because you would pick up the stich to be knitted from the loop that was further away from you, kind of behind the needle. This makes the pattern neater and tighter comparing to the regular one. After that I repeated the pattern below until the length of the sock was 15cm.

The pattern for the lace socks translated (Novita, 2020)

I started out having all the 14 stiches on each needle until I begin to make the lace pattern, so don’t worry if you found yourself accidentally increasing or decreasing the stiches. That happened to me and I still liked the pattern!

When you get to the heel of the sock, the instructions are same as previously EXCEPT

1. You should knit one stich from the 2nd needle and get total of 29 stiches to your heel (10+9+10 when you divide)
2. Repeat the heel pattern 14 times not 12 as earlier mentioned
3. When you decrease the heel stiches, leave the final stiches to the right and left needle and don’t decrease them as well (total of 11 stiches on the middle needle).

After the heel, you should pick up around 15–16 stiches on both sides and decrease by knitting 2 together at the end of the 1st needle and slip 1, knit 1 and lift the slipped stich over the knitted one at the beginning of the 4th needle every other round. The 2nd and 3rd needle continue on the lace pattern. When the length of the sock is desired (in my case it was 19–20cm because I was doing them on EUR 40 (UK 7.5, US 9.5) size) knit one round normally without doing the pattern. Decreasing the stiches in order to create the tip happens when you knit 2 together at the end of the 1st and 3rd needle and slip 1, knit 1 and lift the slipped stich over the knitted one at the beginning of the 2nd and 4th needle in every other round and until you have 6 stiches on each needle. Then you divide the stiches so that the 12 stiches on top of the foot are in one needle and the 12 stiches under the foot are in another needle. Knit them together (according to this model you don’t have to turn the sock around), pull the yarn though the last stiches, secure the ends, and you have yourself a sock!

I plan on doing more lace knitting soon, and I hope it goes better because I don’t have a certain “deadline” for them. All in all, the most challenging and the most laborious socks were the lace ones, and they took me around 10–12h per sock. The other ones I managed to do in a couple of days even though I had some plans besides them. What do we learn from this: start your Christmas knitting in advance and you don’t create unnecessary stress for yourself during the holidays.

References:

Lankava (2020). Ohje: Oranssit palmikkosukat. https://www.lankava.fi/fi/ohje-oranssit-palmikkosukat/

Novita (2020). Pitsisukat Novita Nalle. https://www.novitaknits.com/fi/pitsisukat-novita-nalle-novita-nalle

Nurjia silmukoita (28.1.2019). Hello Yellow! https://nurjiasilmukoita.fi/hello-yellow/