Entrelac Socks

A few weeks ago I came up with the clever plan to knit a pair of socks with Entrelac to fulfill 2 new year's resolutions items: 1) knit 10 pairs of socks and 2) knit something Entrelac.  I know, I'm a total genius :)

I emailed sockJulie (to be distinguished from capecodJulie) to see if she had ever knit Entrelac socks before and if she had any advise for me.  She replied that she had not but had always wanted to knit such a pair.  So we decided to do a knit along.

First I'll talk about my socks.  I picked a ball of Blue Moon Socks that Rock in Lightweight that Karen had gifted me last year (she is such a sweetie!) and then left on a trip.  HAHA!  Didn't see that comin', did ya!  By the time I got back sockJulie had almost finished 1 sock and it is beautiful.  I will put up a link to her project when she puts it up.  It took me some time to get settled in from my trip and I was also distracted by a few things so before I even started, sockJulie had already finished her first sock and this thing is something to marvel at (I will explain why later).  Well, of course, I started furiously knitting on my sock in order to catch up and the final result is this:

Marvel at the beauty of the handpainted colors as they gently pool in little squares and triangles.  Admire my flawless technique and hand...[I'm going to stop now as this could go on for a while]

Let's examine the structure of Entrelac when it is knit in the round:

The entrelac is basically made up of Starting Triangles, followed by 1st Tier of Squares, followed by 2nd Tier of squares and then the desired number of 1st and 2nd tiers and at the end you have the Ending Triangles.  Quite simple really - just trust and follow a good pattern, that's all there is to it.  In that aspect it is ironic that I chose to try this technique for the first time with a sock; a sock is much the same in that it does not make sense the first time you knit a sock, you just have to trust and follow the pattern and you will understand the concept fully after you have finished knitting it.

The pattern sockJulie chose is called Annetrelac Socks (the designer's name incidentally is not Anne, go figure) and in this pattern, you do the entrelac on the leg and then do a plain knit on the foot as I did.  sockJulie however, decided to do the entrelac all the way down the foot - now imagine this with the schematic I put up above!  Basically, she did the starting triangles, a few tiers of squares and then she split her stitches to  do the heel and so had to do ending triangles on half of the stitches and continue the tiers of squares in the front; after she finished the heel, she had to do another set of starting triangles on half the stitches while maintaining the active tier of squares! The thought boggles my mind - she is an amazing knitter!  As I said, I'll put up a link as soon as she puts up her project.

Here is yet another picture of my gorgeous handiwork! LOL.  As you can see, the foot looks inside out.  That's right, I put the purl bumps on the outside.  I chose to do this because my experience with this yarn is while it is very soft, the purl bumps bother the bottom of my feet when I wear them with shoes or boots.  So when I finished knitting the leg, I turned the sock inside out and changed the direction of knitting by doing a wrap and turn and then continued knitting the heel onwards.  So basically I still knit the whole foot, but I did it while the sock was inside out; I learned about this trick on one of Knitpicks' podcast episodes and thought what a clever idea to get all the purl bumps on the outside without purling the whole foot.

I am extremely happy with the socks and am giving them to Winter.  Winter is knitting me a shawl!  So I've decided to knit her a few pairs of socks.  :)  I can't believe I'm going to get one of Winter's gorgeous lace shawls! YAY!!!!