“For Sock Knitting Master Class, I asked fifteen renowned sock knitters and experts to contribute their designs and sock-knitting knowledge. In addition to the spectacular patterns, you’ll learn a variety of design approaches and techniques that will provide the foundation for creating beautiful socks of your own. While some designers begin by choosing a skein of yarn for its color, fiber content, or structure, then design a sock that makes the most of these properties, others begin with an idea for a particular stitch or color pattern. (…)
However they begin, the most successful sock designs follow the Bauhaus principle that form follows function. In socks, this means that each part — cuff, leg, heel, instep, sole, and toe — has a pleasing design that accomplishes the necessary function. The true art in designing comes from the integration of the different parts into an overall plan that is greater than the sum of its individual parts. ” — Sock Knitting Master Class, Ann Budd
Considering all the sock knitting books I own, and I own quite a few, and all the patterns I’ve seen in those books, this is the first one that made me gasp out loud at a pattern. Anna Zilboorg’s Half-Stranded Socks. It may just be the gorgeous photographs, but I took a sock yarn stash dive as soon as I could, looking for two solids (or semi-solids) that would work. I got as far as casting on for the first sock, when I really thought about it an realized casting a few stitches and knitting a long, thin toe band an a dark yarn late at night wasn’t something I really had the mental spoons for at the end of a work day. Also, in the near distance I saw my Firefly socks from A Knitter’s Book of Socks, staring at me with their bright colors, almost-done first sock on handy circular needles and I just felt like a monster. There will be another time, though. The construction of the Half-Stranded socks really is pretty clever. You cast on for the toe band, pick up stitches for the top half of the foot and knit the stranded pattern on the instep, put these stitches on a holder once you get to the gusset, then pick up the other stitches for the bottom of the foot that you’ll knit in one color, then join at the gusset and knit up from there for the rest of the sock. The though process there is so that if you end up with a hole from wear in the bottom of the foot, you can just snip a stitch and re-knit the bottom without loosing the rest of the sock. Reminds me of Elizabeth Zimmermann’s Moccasin Socks from Knitter’s Almanac. Me, however, being the basically lazy person I am, I’d probably just darn any holes that appear. But it’s nice to know I have options. I love that richly stranded pattern, though.
There are a lot of really wearable patterns in the book. I know, you figure it’s a book of sock patterns, so yeah, you reckon they’d be wearable, but in a book like this where designers are trying to come up with a real showstopper to show off their design skills, there are bound to be one or two designs that are hard to imagine seeing regular wear. Like, for instance, Up-Down Entrelac by Kathryn Alexander. Don’t get me wrong, they’re certainly striking, but looking at them I can’t help but think they’d be a bear to knit tight enough to fit. Entrelac, at least for me, is tough enough to pull off as it is, but on the photo used in the book, you can tell that the finished product is already starting to bag out on the foot of the model. Certainly statement socks, though!
In this book the actual knitting techniques (the Master Class bits) are spread out through the pages, instead of clumped together at the beginning like I usually see. The book is packed with detailed instructions on different methods of sock knitting, such as different heel and toe structures, and the pros and cons of each. Definitely worth taking a look at if you want to push your sock knitting to the next level.