Granny's Socks (Adriana)

When I visited Heather in mid-January, naturally we had to go on a yarn crawl (we are self-respecting knitters after all). I was a girl on a mission: to find suitably luxurious sock yarn for Granny's 90th birthday. When I found Regia Silk in the Venezia colourway I knew I was set. Granny has always collected masks and together we picked out a stunning gold and silver Venice-inspired mask on our trip to England when I was 16. This sock yarn evoked the same emotions in me as did the mask.

Granny adores the socks I knit for her. She wears them year round. It took my mom a week after Christmas to pry them off her feet for a washing. Since I know how much she loves them I am happy to go to any amount of trouble to make sure that her socks fit perfectly. This means doing a top-down sock since she has specific requirements of the toe. Unfortunately, her other request was that these be tall socks and to make best use of the yarn would usually involve a toe-up sock. To manage this I did a provisional cast on and knit the foot, and then picked up the stitches and knit the leg. I increased from 64 stitches to 92 to accommodate her shapely calves. Many thanks to the Keyboard Biologist's excellent tutorial.
To give these socks the stretchiest cast-off possible, I braved the formerly scary "sewn off". It was waaaay easier than I had thought and gave a super stretchy edge.
These socks took from the end of January to the end of April though, in my defense, very little time was spent on them. It's amazing how long it takes to knit something when you don't work on it ;)

Ok, enough talking. Time for the pictures!

The sun was setting so the colour isn't quite right. Look at how little yarn I had left over!


This picture shows off the increases. I kept forgetting to M1R since my default is M1L but Granny's not going to be able to tell.

I promise to get pictures of the birthday girl modelling her socks in a few weeks. Keep your fingers crossed that they will fit!