Tag Archives: Vanilla Latte Socks

More for feet

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Think of these as my Orange Creamsicle socks. Orange on the outside with my icy ghostly pale feet on the inside. They are my version of Virginia Rose-Jeanes Vanilla Latte Socks. The Vanilla Latte pattern is wonderful, as is. I just made a few modifications.

If you haven’t already figured it out from my prattling on about knitting with discontinued yarns and unavailable patterns, I am no spring chicken. Some of my socks are almost assuredly older than you. I mostly enjoy wearing my handknit socks, not to my hot yoga classes, not to my children’s pre-COVID playdates, but in bed. A hot water bottle might do as well, I suppose. In fact, he-who-will-not-be-named bought me one for Christmas. No joke. He was sure I would like it. But I like to wear my socks in bed. This pair is totally warm and cozy.

The Vanilla Latte pattern is really not vanilla at all. It includes some items of knitter’s choice by supplying 3 toe shapes and 3 heel stitches. I chose the Eye of Partridge heel cuff and the round wedge toe. I modified the pattern to make a long cuff. And I worked a knit 3 purl 1 rib through the whole cuff and the top of the foot, not just for the initial 1 and 1/2 inches that the pattern calls for. I’d like to say that I planned out not shifting to the knit 6, purl 2 pattern the designer sets out for the rest of the cuff and the top of the foot. I just forgot to shift to it at the appropriate point. By the time I was a few inches beyond the shift, I was liking the look of knit 3 purl 1 and decided to simply continue on that path. Instead of fingering weight, I used my favorite sportweight sock yarn: Blue Moon Fiber Arts Socks That Rock Mediumweight.

My cold feet are enjoying these socks. A lot. If you’d like to see Vanilla Latte as the designer intended, check here.

These next foot warmers need to be modeled on feet first. Because when you first see them off-foot it doesn’t make you want to knit them.

These are Mone Drager’s Bea’s Slippers. I’ve been wanting to knit them for a number of years. I’d seen some project pages that made them look odd in an interesting way. I found the construction intriguing. And my busy beautiful skein of worsted weight Fynn, from The Yarns of Rhichard Devrieze, was looking for a home.

These were a total hoot to knit! After finishing one I was skeptical that feet would find them comfy. I was wrong.

These slippers start at the toe with “your favorite toe-up cast-on.” Personally, I don’t have a favorite. Judy’s Magic Cast-on is decidedly unmagical for me. I don’t exactly know what a “Figure 8” is except on ice. With help from Brown-Eyed Bab’s excellent photo tutorial I can manage a Turkish cast-on, so that’s what I used.

Knitting these socks produces some interesting stresses on the fabric as you knit. I’ll just leave it at that. Maybe that was a function of the fact that apparently I eschew all magic when it comes to knitting, including Magic Loop technique. Please ignore (I do) that laddering on the cuffs. I typically don’t get ladders in my 4-needle doublepoint work. I’m blaming those interesting stresses, even though by cuff time they’d faded. A bath in Eucalan helped some.

Here’s to warm feet and a happier New Year!

Knits for feet

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We’re all looking for something homey and comfy to help sooth that savage beast who wants to yell “enough already.”  Knitting stuff for feet, actually knitting anything, will help us knitters stay grounded in trying times.

This is a pair of socks I knit from one skein of Schachenmayr Regia Arne & Carlos Pairfect. There’s a pattern inside the ball band. It’s printed so tiny I had to get out the magnifying glass that I use to read the warnings on pharmacy products. Once I read it I saw it was just your basic sock pattern, so I decided to rely on a pattern that I could read easily: Vanilla Latte socks by Virginia Rose-Jeanes.

Vanilla Latte is a Ravelry freebie that over 14,400 Ravelers have knit and posted on their project pages. It’s a bit of a sock recipe, where you pick your heel style and your toe style. I picked an eye of partridge stitch for the heel and what the designer calls a “rounded toe wedge.” This pre-dyed yarn isn’t going to show up properly without stockinette. So I worked the rest of the sock plainly, instead of relying on the pattern stitch that is the signature of Vanilla Latte. I guess I made a very plain Vanilla Latte.

Perfect fit!

When I saw the pattern for Katerina Mushyn’s Two Needle Socks appear on Ravelry I quickly acquired some bulky yarn and set to work. The pattern calls for Aran weight, but I figured I’d be using these as slippers or boot socks and I wanted to knit a tight gauge. So I tried a new (to me) bulky yarn, Sirdar’s Harrad Tweed Chunky. It was ridiculously discounted and I figured I’d give it a go. The yarn is very messy to work with, because slubs fly all over the place, so I can’t recommend the yarn. But the socks? Well check them out.

First, let me show you my feet wearing my new socks. I’m doing this to convince you, from the outset, that this pattern really does work.

This pattern results in a sock that is a good fit for human feet. But here’s what you have when you complete your knitting.

I just had to knit them to see how that turned into this:

As you can tell, there’s a fair bit of sewing to pull this off. It’s nothing challenging though. They aren’t going to win any beauty contests, but they were a hoot to knit! And the pattern is a Ravelry freebie.

The Russian designer’s English version of the pattern is easy to work with. But if you have any trouble, I very much enjoyed her video on how to knit the pattern. From watching the designer’s video and examining her sample before it’s sewn together, it’s clear that the designer slipped the first stitch of each garter stitch row (purlwise) and purled the last stitch of each garter stitch row. That’s what the English pattern is referring to as the “edge stitch” in the decrease and increase sections (the toe and the heel). The instructions for sewing the socks up are especially useful and that starts about 19:45 minutes into the video. Knitting hands speak a language we all understand.

These past few months have also found me replenishing the big guys’ bootie supply. That doesn’t sound right. I’ve been knitting Kris Basta’s freebie Better Dorm Boots. Versions of these dorm boots have been kicking around the internet from the early days of the old Knitlist. I like Basta’s version. My only modifications are that I use a chunky weight yarn rather than two strands of worsted. And I knit the ribbing through 60 rows rather than 45 because I like them cuffed.

My favorite yarn for these best dorm boots is Plymouth Encore Chunky. The 75% acrylic 25% wool makes for easy care.

Patons Shetland Chunky works well too:

I knit mine using size 10 US needles and they fit a size 10-11 manfoot. Be sure to bind off loosely on the cuff so you don’t cut off a fellow’s circulation!

Oh Juicy!

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Black Sheep Knitters Guild had its annual “Brown Bag Swap” a few months ago. You probably already know how that goes. Bring a gift, pick a gift, steal somebody else’s gift, or pick a new one. I generally favor the strategy of picking a gift that isn’t nicely wrapped. After all, maybe you can tell a book by its lack of cover. It’s a fun diversion.

I’ve never knit with Bad Amy. This Indie dyer‘s yarns tend to sell out quickly. And she runs yarn clubs that have a lot of competition to get into. Someone-who-will-not-be-named put this self-striping skein of the “Oh Juicy” colorway into the swap. Oh Lordy! A gift can only be stolen twice and then it lands where it landed. Oh Juicy was chosen. But the giftee didn’t get to keep it. Steal #1. When my swap number was called soon after, it was Steal #2. And so Oh Juicy stayed with me. Lovely stuff. 80% merino, 20% nylon. Should hold up well.

This is my Oh, Juicy knit up in Virginia Rose-Jeane’s great free pattern, Vanilla Latte Socks. It’s one of the most knit free sock patterns on Ravelry: 7685 projects posted. It is top-down knit, designed to be worked on magic-loop or two circulars. But it is very easily adaptable to double pointed needles. That’s my preference.

I knitted the largest size, on 72 stitches, using US size one needles. I chose the “eye of partridge” stitch for the heel and the rounded toe.

A perfect fit.

And, if the sock fits, wear it. These are mine, for sure.

The skein is generous. I needed only 14 grams of the 25-gram contrast yarn. And I had 20 grams left of the 100 gram skein of the main color.

There was enough yarn left for an Oh, Juicy bear.

This is my old stand-by bear pattern, from Lesley Ann Price’s “Kids Knits” book. You’ll have to search the library stacks to find that one. Thirteen of the eighteen Rav project pages on this bear are mine. And that’s not all I’ve made. In the last 20 years or so, I’ve probably knit a hundred of these guys! The bear is knit flat, in one piece (after you join the legs on the needles). Very little seaming. Piece ‘o cake. My Juicy has already been gifted to a little guy.