Vacation knitting is a ton of fun. This past week I decided to get one pair of my children's socks done. So I brought along the leftover brown yarn (Shibui Sock in Earth, leftover from the Icosa Ball) I had earmarked for my son, and some size 2 needles.
The beauty of simple socks is you don't really even need a pattern once you have the hang of them. The wonderful thing about children's socks is that they're so small they take almost no time at all to complete. I kept a pair of DS's store-bought socks on the side to give me a feel for a good size, and just improvised.
These socks start with 16 stitches in Judy's Magic Cast-On. I increased on either side of the instep and sole (using Cat Bordhi's LLI and RLI) every-other row until I had 48 stitches. Then I worked the instep in a 2x2 rib, and the sole in stockinette. I did extend one purl stitch on either side of the sole to make the numbers work out right and center the ribbing. The foot is 20 rows long to the heel.
The heel is short rows, starting with all of the sole stitches and decreasing to eight stitches (between wraps) before increasing back to the full width. I didn't bother to pull up the wraps and knit them. After all, these are going on a 1.5-year-old boy; he doesn't care about the wraps! The cuff is 2x2 ribbing all the way around, and is 24 rows long. Bind-off was in pattern: *work one, pass previous stitch over* repeat to end.
I'm moderately happy with the socks. I think I could probably reduce them to 32 stitches and be much happier. At first glance they seem to fit just fine. But there is little (if any) negative ease, and unless stuffed into shoes they slide right off his little feet. In fact, he seems to like that and pulls them off at the first opportunity with much laughing.
I think after I get a bunch of other projects done, I may try these again with leftover green (Shibui Sock, again) yarn. It was a lot of fun, tho, to whip out a pair of socks without even having to think about it, and do it so very fast.
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