Studio Strategos

If you've been following this blog for a bit, it should come as no surprise that I love socks. I love knitting them. I love wearing them. I love browsing sites for socks I'd never knit. My sock drawer is actually 2 drawers, well, 3, if you count the one dedicated to the socks I've made. What's more, I have a great love/obsession with every kind of toe sock. Tabi socks, where the big toe is separate from the rest, are a personal favorite. They're fun to wear and, even better, they're fun to knit. 

I'm not the only one in the house who loves tabi socks and this pair is for him. The challenge of these socks wasn't their large size. The challenge was starting completely from scratch. Other toe up tabi patterns have hard seams between the toes or just sew up the gap. Neither of these techniques quite appealed to me. Plus, I needed a pattern that would fit a US 14 foot at a gauge of 9 sts/in. Didn't have much luck finding that. In order to get what I needed, I came up with my own pattern and it's a pretty good start. However, it's not quite ready to be released into the wild. Tweaking aside, the finished pair has gotten the official seal of approval and another pair isn't too far off. Just not this month.

Nichol was one of the first friends I made when I started at a new high school in a new state. We've continued to be good friends through college and beyond. All told, it's been seven years since we met and, during that time, I learned to knit and she learned to crochet. So, several months ago when she proposed crocheted goodness in exchange for knitted baby goodness for her soon to be born nieces, I jumped at the chance. One of the requests was a hat. I didn't want to make just any hat. It had to be special. Soon, there were several ideas floating around in my head - stripes, short rows, lace - before I decided on a cute leaf motif. After all, it was almost Spring. After a bit of trial and error, both hats were finished and just in time for two little Spring babies.

The hat is knit from the stem down and uses a variety of techniques: knitting, purling, working in the round, yarn overs, a variety of lifted increases, decreases, and EZ's sewn cast off. The pattern isn't written for any specific way of knitting (DPN's, Magic Loop, 2 Circulars, etc) so you can easily use your favorite method without translation. 4 stitch markers are necessary whichever method you choose. Plus, yardage is minimal. The hat uses far less than one skein which makes for great stash busting of that errant, leftover yarn.

$5.00

Also, many thanks to the test knitters for their help: Jeme, Angela, Lena, LPetiteTricoteuse, Kimberly, and Evelyn.