The Jogless Hiking Sock

I'm ready for Fall! Bring on the Spiced Cider and Pumpkins and Pot Pies and cozy Flannel! I know! It's the beginning of August! I'm not gonna let that get me down. 

In preparation for the coziest Season of all, I decided Alex (my wonderful bf) could use a pair of Tweed Socks to go with the magical Tweed Sweater I knitted him in March.

I think they turned out just adorable. 

Really, there's no greater joy than making your boyfriend model Wool Socks outside on a 90 degree day. Hehehe...

The pattern I used was The Jogless Hiking Sock by Millard Fontenot. I did alter the pattern to my liking quite a bit. the original pattern calls for lots of striping and an Intarsia color block on the top of the ankle. I just wanted a plain, DK weight sock but couldn't find any in a manly size, except for this pair! My alterations included moving the rib section to an inch after the heel shaping and not including any stripe work. (Except for the little grey cuff.)

I did get to learn a couple fun techniques in this pattern. JBMCO; Judy Becker's Magic Cast on, which was a little tricky but once you get it down it's very pretty and truly kind of magical. When I've made socks in the past (which, honestly, I don't do that often) I've used a Gusset Heel so the W&T's (Wrap and Turn/Twist's) Heel kinda threw me for a loop. But once you figure it out it's not too much of a challenge and it does look very clean. This video helped me figure out what I was doing. I KNOW I've done this technique before, but somewhere along the way I totally forgot about it. Thank goodness for YouTube. 

As for the yarn, I used  Knit Picks City Tweed DK, this stuff is wonderful. It's 55% Merino Wool, 25% Superfine Alpaca and 20% Donegal Tweed. I am such a sucker for Alpaca, I'll pretty much try any yarn that has Alpaca in it. This pattern calls for a DK weight yarn (it actually calls for THIS yarn specifically, how convenient!) but it also calls for smaller needles (US 3, 3.25mm) than you would normally use with a DK so these turned out super dense and squishy. It has a great  weight and texture from the wool and tweed but a nice, soft sheen to it from the Alpaca. 

I actually did not intend to have any striping on this pattern. The only reason I did is because I did not order enough yarn for this pattern. For a size 10 pair of socks I ended up needing more than two balls of yarn and by the time I got around to ordering more (mere weeks later!) they were completely sold out of the Brocade! Not available until 10/30/15! What the what!? So then I thought I'd add a stripe of Obsidian to the top and the NEXT DAY when I went to order it; not available until 9/30/15!?

The moral of the story is; buy as much yarn as you need at the time you need it! These guys sell out QUICK! 


I hope you enjoyed the review! I'll be (hopefully) posting a fun, felt tutorial and pattern on here within the week so stock up on felt and get your sewing machine (or needle and thread) out of cobwebs and ready for action! 

Thanks for stopping by! 

-Ashley