By Katrin on Montag, 29. Januar 2018
Category: knitting

Funky New Knitting Project.

Now that the current sweater is finished and I'm travelling a bit as well, I obviously needed a new project, something nice and small to take along with me...

...and it didn't take me long to find one: I'm making toe socks.

A bit of background for that? Here you go.
I love walking with bare feet, and I rarely wear shoes or socks at home when it is warm enough to go without. In autumn and winter, though, it's not so nice to have free but cold feet, so I walk in socks without shoes most of the time. I also have a very slight tendency to develop a bunion, as some orthopedic guy told me years ago, so I try to walk shoe- and sock-free as much as possible and consciously spread out my toes, countering that tendency.

Most socks still tend to slightly mash the toes together, and they don't grant the full freedom of toe movement that you have barefoot. The solution? Toe socks. These are a funny-looking thing, and they are a little weird to wear at first, but I like the toe-spreading freedom they grant. Except... I only have one pair up to now, and that was given to me by a friend who knit these socks for herself, then found out they don't fit her at all. They do fit me better than her, but the little toe is a total mis-construction, as it is too small and the start of the toe sits way too far at the front of the foot. Basically, that sock construction starts all the toes on one straight line. That works with fingers for gloves, but toes are much shorter, and they do start along a curved shape on the foot, so starting them on one line will not work properly with foot anatomy.

Fortunately, someone else has already thought deeply about it and came up with a really smart pattern for toe socks, where you start in the middle of the foot, knit towards the toes, then pick up stitches and knit the rest of your sock toe-up. Here's the pattern on Ravelry, called Funky Five-Toe Socks.



It's a little fiddly (I use thin yarn and 1.5 mm needles), it involves a generous amount of hedgehog wrestling, the yarn has lovely colours, and I'm having a bunch of fun with it.

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